Rather than telling about a lesson I’ve learned, I’m going to tell about something I haven’t solved yet.
Twice in the last week I’ve had a bluegill on my line get chased by a much larger largemouth bass. Both happened in manmade ponds that are quite different from each other. One is a 5-acre or so pond in a public park that sees daily fishing pressure, is surrounded by weeds, and has very wary fish. The other is in a remote pond deep in the woods that is rarely visited and is small enough to throw a rock across.
On one of these occasions, the bass actually got the bluegill in its mouth while I was playing it, waiting to see what the bass would do. When I pulled on the bluegill, the bass let it go. After each of these occasions, I tried various types of poppers and streamers but without getting any interest from the bass. I could however, still see it swimming around the area. I would guess that these are fairly aggressive fish that are not looking for a dead lure, but for a live fish to eat. Possibly, I don’t have any streamers large enough to interest these bass. One of the bluegills that was being chased was about 8" long.
This is not my picture, but it captures the moment pretty well.
The first two ideas that came to my mind were to try a spinnerbait on my spinning rod, or to catch a smaller bluegill with a nymph and then put a big hook through it and use it as bait. But neither of those ideas involve catching the bass with a fly rod.
What suggestions do you have to catch these bass with a fly rod?
I had one do that once and I actually caught the bass. Don’t know if the bream got and the bass went ahead an bit the fly or what but I had a 2 1/2 lb. smallmouth in the boat. My fishing partner was on his first trip with our club and new to fly fishing and was hooked.
I have experienced exactly what you did. In one pond, I had a “pet” bass, 20" long, that would follow me as I fished my way around the public pond. She would occasionally attack the smaller bass, bluegill, or crappie that I would hook, fight, and land on the fly rod. Those panfish were often 8"-10" range. I tried all sorts of big flies. I got looks, but no strikes. I did catch that bass 3 times in one year…twice on topwater bass poppers, once one a large weighted nymph pattern.
Here’s a video I took of it once…I had an 11" bass on…if you look closely (I could see it fine with my polarized sunglasses, but it isn’t as obvious on the video), you may see the big bass following the smaller one around.
At another public pond, several times I had a large bass chase bluegills and/or pumpkinseed sunfish I was fighting. A few times, the bass managed to catch the bluegill, and as it swam off with its prize, I would feed it line. After 5 minutes or so, I would start retrieving all the line the bass had taken. I caught that bass twice…once with a bluegill in its throat, and then the 2nd time the bluegill somehow got away, but the bass still got hooked by my fly. That bass was just under 22".
So…I don’t have a good solution…but it seems like those bigger bass want a bigger meal. So, try larger flies. Big topwaters have worked best for me for larger bass, but they DO learn to avoid them over time. Perhaps try firetiger-colored baitfish flies.
One style of flies I haven’t experimented much with for Largemouth Bass is the big bottom-bouncing flies that look like a crayfish, or a fly rod version of a rubber-legged bass jig (like the Grim Reaper fly).
I have had that happen many times. Also with other species mixes in both fresh and saltwater.
The prey species are attracted to the smaller struggling hooked fish that is giving off all sorts of signals that say it might be an easy meal.
This is very difficult to imitate with a fly - maybe impossible. Hard and soft lures use rattle, wobbling action, semi random darting action, or other features that attempt to simulate an injured fish, but still don’t quite match the real thing.
I have found that baitfish patterns that move very erratically sometimes out perform standard pattern. The erratically behaving patterns that I am most familiar with all have weight at the back of the hook or even trailing behind the hook. I haven’t seen much in writing about such patterns other than discussions over the last 15 years on Dan Blantons website.
I have had great luck with bass like these in a public park pond about 30 min before dark until an hour after dark throwing large foam frog patters (Cecil Guidry’s hell boy) and large Moorish mice on an 8wt rod . Good luck .
waskeyc,
We have done OK in the spring (BG spawn?) time using a grand-kid to catch the “attractor” and self using an Embellished Lefty’s Deceiver (found in FOTW archives) to pester the bass. Hard strips of the bug are needed to make the plastic “under-collar” create the “pulse” needed to excite the lateral line of the bass…maybe?
…lee s.
