Flyfished Saturday morning. Hit 3 ponds. Caught mostly bass. Biggest two were 17.5" and 18.25", both on topwater:
Another post that really isn’t warmwater, nor central Iowa…but it is NE Iowa, and it is flyfishing so… here goes.
My buddy Jay and I went back up to NE Iowa for 2 days this week. Saw lots of folks out in horse-drawn carriages on our way there.
We fished 4 trout streams, 3 of them were new to us.
Tuesday:
I got on the board first with a nice 13" Brown Trout.
Jay caught his first trout of the trip a bit later… 21" Brown. AWESOME fish!
This is a picture of the trout after Jay released it:
About 10 minutes later, I caught my biggest trout of the trip… a 19" Brown. That’s my new fly rod PB Brown Trout!
These big trout have massive jaws and really gnarly teeth. My thumb got totally shredded.
We tried to continue on up the stream, but the weeds were impenetrable. As we came back down stream, this cow plunked herself into the spot where I’d caught my big trout.
Check out the size of this tree!
Went to another part of the stream, caught more browns. It was HOT. Jay and I wore longsleeve sun shirts for protection. We had both drank all the water we’d brought along with us (we had more in the car). We were soaked in our own sweat and not feeling too good. To add insult to injury, bugs were swarming my face, and I’d left my sunglasses in the car. I did find this shed before we left:
We gave it up and went to check into our hotel.
After changing clothes and getting some dinner at a local establishment, we changed clothes again and went to a nearby stream to fish some more. We caught rainbows and browns.
We worked our way downstream on this creek. Got about a mile-and-a-half away from the car, and what looked like a small cloud dumped heavy rain on us and continued for a good half hour.
By the time we got back to the car, we were completely soaked for the 2nd time of the day.
Wednesday:
This was just outside the hotel entrance as we checked out in the morning:
The rain from the evening before had raised the creek levels and current speed…and muddied them up as well. Boo. Jay started catching trout…many more than I was. Every spot we’d try, he’d catch fish. I was struggling. I’d catch some, but it was like 1 fish for every 5 Jay was catching. I ended up getting him on species, though, cuz I caught a White Sucker:
…and a freaking BLUEGILL from a trout stream! That’s how bad my luck was.
I decided to cut my losses and suggested we find a new stream. So we did. That helped a bit.
We ended up catching a decent number of rainbows and a brook trout each. I had several other brookies strike, but I couldn’t keep them on the hook long enough to land them.
And that wrapped up another trip to Iowa’s amazing Driftless region.
GREAT report and pics Dave!
Gotta love catching trouts with ALL their fins. Ours out here are mostly “truck trout” with very deformed or missing fins.
…lee s.
Thanks! Yes, Iowa does have some streams with naturally reproducing trout populations. And there are also streams that get stocked weekly. Each stream seems to have its own personality, as do the fish in it.
Back to actual warmwater fishing…
Flyfished Sunday morning. Hit 2 ponds. Caught some bass and a green sunfish.
Biggest bass was this 20-incher, caught on a Howitzer head popper.
Great report David and super photos of the fish!
Thanks Dale! 
Took the afternoon off work to wade a river for Smallmouth. The river was high but wadable…and stained. They didn’t go for my topwater. I waded a 0.7 mile stretch of water. After fishing through more than 1/2 of it with only a couple strikes from small bass, I switched to a weighted subsurface fly pattern. That helped. I finished fishing with only 3 Smallmouth, but they were decent ones.
17.5":
16":
17.25":
A good day on the water Dave
Yeah, I was enjoying it even before finally catching some fish. 
Flyfished Saturday morning. Caught some bass on topwaters. The 2 largest were
20.5":
and 17":
Hit the same pond again later in the evening (along with at least 7 other anglers)…fished my way around the entire pond…caught just 1 bass.
Flyfished for bass yesterday evening after the rain stopped. Visited 2 ponds. Caught 2 smaller bass at the first pond. Another angler showed up and blocked me from fishing the better 1/2 of the pond. On to pond #2.
I had driven by this pond on the way to pond #1, and there wasn’t anybody fishing it. But when I came back from Pond #1, there were 4 people there. I fished it anyway. The anglers there said they hadn’t caught anything…the fish didn’t seem to be biting. I lost a nice bass after a decent battle. The other anglers eventually left as it started to get dark. I fished topwater ended up catching at least a 1/2 dozen bass, and lost/missed a few others. Biggest 2 were 18.5" and 18".
I’d heard GameChangers tied with a mop-tail swim very good. Plus…I wanted to tie a slightly smaller yellow one for smallmouth bass. Smallies LOVE yellow.
So, I tied one up Tuesday evening.
I tested it out on Wednesday afternoon. It does swim really well. I quickly had a smallmouth hit the fly, but it either bit the tail or quickly threw the hook. A few casts later, a much bigger smallie ambled over and gulped the GameChanger. A beautiful fish of 18"!
I caught a couple more smallies on that fly, and a several on Blockhead Popper, and a couple on a chartreuse beadhead bugger/leech.
Took the afternoon off work yesterday. Caught some Smallmouth Bass. Biggest was 16".
Then hit a local pond later, caught bass and bluegills. Nothing big…biggest bass was 15.5".
Flyfished Saturday morning. Hit 3 local public ponds.
Pond #1: Caught just one bass, 19".
Pond #2:
Caught around 8 bass. Biggest here was also 19", although it was skinny.
Pond #3:
Missed a couple big strikes, caught a couple smaller bass.
Saw at least 9 other anglers, combined, at the first 2 ponds. I quit a little after 11am.
Caught my Personal Best all-tackle carp on a fly/fly rod yesterday. 35" long, 22.5" girth, calculated weight of a bit over 22 lbs. A solid 20 minute battle…at least. I had a group of folks walking around the pond that stopped to watch, and finally gave up and moved on…then a couple kids came down to fish and hung around for awhile waiting for me to land it…and they also finally gave up and started fishing further down the shoreline. Meanwhile, I was putting almost as much pressure on the fish as I thought my gear could take. Good thing I had 12 lb tippet on!
Also caught some bass, bluegills, and 4 crappies on the day. This bluegill measured 9.5":
Very nice fish David!
Thanks, Dale!
White Crappie:
9" Pumpkinseed Sunfish hybrid:
