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I went out Saturday morning to go fishing. We
came back a few days early from vacation because
of problems. Everything is fine now. I went to a pond
that I don't get into very often but it is a lot of
fun when I get to it.
I waited until about 7:00 am to go out so that
I could see where I was going. I have to cross
a gully and I knew that it had rained while we
were gone and I did not want to get stuck. As
long as I stayed out of the ruts I did fine. Got
to the pond and it was as smooth as glass and the
water was clear.
I got everything in the canoe and got it down to
the edge of the pond. I had a couple of flies on
and cast them around the area where I was going to
launch the canoe. The fish showed no interest so
I headed out onto the pond. I tried a variety of
flies and retrieves and nothing was working. I
tried them at every depth that I could and nothing
was happening.
I decided to try a Chili Pepper fly, basically a
copper bugger, and see what might happen. I cast
it out and tried retrieving the fly and nothing
happened. Then I did one of my normal things, got
the line tangled up in the butt of the rod and the
fly landed about 15 feet away. By the time I got
the line untangled, the line straightened out, and
calling myself several names, I was ready to lift
the line off the water. The problem was that the
end of the line was moving sideways.
I reacted by setting the hook and had a nice gill
on the line. I do try to be observant and decided
to cast the fly out again and let it drop. It took
a few more casts and I had another gill take the
fly. Now I am beginning to realize that the fish
seem to be along the breakline of the pond. It drops
from about 3 to 8 feet over a 4-foot width. If I cast
near the deep edge of this and let the fly drop then
the fish took it.
The wind started to come up some so I dropped the
front anchor down and cast some more. After a few
more casts with nothing happening I moved the canoe
about 20 feet and dropped anchor again. I am starting
to get a little smarter in my old age and made a short
cast first. The fly had just hit the water when I saw
the line twitch and I was into another fish. I did this on
the next four casts also as I increased the distance
of the cast a little each time. It seems that the fish
were a little scattered along the breakline and seemed
to be fairly spooky.
As I got to the shallower end of the pond, I began
to have bass hit the fly. These fish all were from
6 to 10 inches long. I am glad to see them in the
pond as they will begin to control the panfish
number very soon. I moved to the other side of
the pond and dropped the rear anchor and cast
with the wind. This side of the pond is a sloping
shore of about 30 degrees that goes out about 20
feet before it drops off any. I was casting to the
shore and bringing the fly back. When the fly got
about 15 feet from shore I could see a fish flash
on it and I would hook them. Then I would loose
them.
I was sure that I was losing crappie, which is a
terrible fate in life. I tied a fly that runs more
in a horizontal plane, by using foam and bead
chain eyes, and tried that. The fish were not
interested in that color. I tired three other
flies that are tied the same way, and no such
luck. It was back to the Chili Pepper and having
fish hit it. I did manage to land one crappie
but it was barely hooked. I must have lost another
40 fish, but I know where they are.
It was time to head home. I needed to weed the
garden and I had tomatoes, peppers and okra to
pick and take care of. They did make a nice meal with
the fresh fish fillets.
It was one of those rare times when the fish were
keyed in on one color. This does not happen often
to me, but does often enough to make me keep changing
flies until something works. Let me know if this has
happened to you.
Hope you can get out on the water. ~ Richard Zieger
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