Nice fish Dave. I was under the impression that crappy liked white. I haven’t been able to fish for over a month (work and heat in NC) But I’m gonna get to the ponds and find some
Yes, crappies do like white. Especially if their main forage is shad. In my own experience, I think crappies like Chartreuse even more. But sometimes they will also go after dark colors. I knew a guy that fished crappie tournaments who said if he could only use one color, it would be cranberry (a very dark red). I don’t know about that. Especially since the tournament guys were usually fishing deeper water, and red wouldn’t show up that deep.
But chartreuse has caught a LOT of crappies for me.
Took Tuesday off work to go flyfishing. The river was muddy! Fished the first 1/2 of the stretch without a single strike.
I actually got out of the river and was walking thru the woods, considering giving up on the fish in this river for the day. As I walked thru the woods, I saw all kinds of things. A large footprint:
A 3" long millipede on a tree:
A caterpillar eating a nettle:
A red leaf caught on a spider thread that was twisting in the breeze and would flash really bright:
And then there was this heart-shaped rock:
Anyway…
Got back in the river and finally found a few fish. Biggest fish (landed) of the day was this 17" Smallmouth Bass:
Caught 3 or 4 others, this one looked pretty good.
Went to another place. Caught some largemouth bass, bluegills, crappies, missed a nice catfish, breifly foul-hooked a bigmouth buffalo, lost a smallmouth buffalo, and had 2 carp on (hooked in the mouth) for quite a while, but both eventually shook free. One of the carp was pretty big.
Sunday evening after the last rain, I got out to do some flyfishing. Hit 2 ponds.
Pond #1:
Caught maybe 5 or so largemouth bass. The 2 biggest were both 18.5".
One was really skinny:
The other was healthier:
Also caught a nice Green Sunfish. The edge of their opercles can vary in color…usually from yellow to orange and even almost red. I don’t recall ever seeing a purple one before, and it matched the color of the flowers on shore:
20" bass from last night:
Flyfished yesterday. Visited 2 ponds.
Pond #1:
I didn’t catch anything.
Pond #2:
Caught at least 15 bass (none over maybe 14"), lots of Bluegills, 1 Hybrid Sunfish, 3 Pumpkinseed Sunfish, and 3 Crappies.
Didn’t catch many fish last night. A couple decent bluegills and a bass. Bass measured 17".
Went out yesterday. Got 25 crappie and one gill.
Best day in a long time.
Rick
That IS a good day! How big were the biggest crappies? You get into some nice ones!
Three of them were about 15 inches. The rest about 12 inches.
Rick
Wow! 15" is a pretty big crappie! Nice work, Rick!
Flyfished a public pond Saturday evening.
Caught bluegills, crappies, and bass.
The bass was a beauty! 20.5".
Flyfished Sunday afternoon. Fished 4 other public ponds.
Caught bass, crappies, and bluegills again.
Caught my PB Bluegill (10.5", on the left in the picture) at one pond, and a really nice 9.5" bluegill (on the right in the picture) at a 2nd pond.
Jay fished the last 2 ponds with me, and took a picture of me with the biggest bluegill.
Now here’s the weird thing…I looked at the times when the big bass and the big bluegill pictures were taken. I took the first picture of the bass at 4:33pm on Saturday. Jay took my picture with the big bluegill at exactly 4:33pm on Sunday. WHAT???
Synchronized fishing ? Now that’s cool lol You surely hit their feeding times. Nice fish Dave
Tried out the Micro Gamechanger on Friday evening. It worked! Crappies liked it.
I had a something very heavy on briefly…possibly a big bass, or just a snag. It was moving towards me, but it wasn’t on long enough to know if it was something alive.
And then the unthinkable occurred. I caught a White Bass on the Micro Gamechanger…from a pond! 13.25".
Great looking fly and very nice fish! GT?
Thanks! Not GT. REN.
My buddy Jay and I spent 3 days in NE Iowa flyfishing trout streams this week.
First, the stream conditions: NE Iowa has gotten a LOT of rain in the past 3 weeks, including one event that dumped 4.5" of rain in 2 hours. There were many road sections that got washed out. Some are still being repaired. The streams are still high, muddy, with fast current. Tough fishing condtions for sure.
Weather conditions: Although central Iowa was pretty decent, NE Iowa averaged about 8 degrees cooler. I think it may have hit 48 degrees one day, which was the warmest of the 3 days. We had some light rain one afternoon. It was windy 2 of the 3 days, but fishing was do-able for the most part.
Other factors: Brown trout are spawning at the moment. They typically spawn in shallow gravel stretches with quick current. Tough to fish, and very spooky. Saw some large trout, though!
The first 2 days, we fished streams that contained ONLY naturally reproducing populations of brown trout and/or brook trout. No stocked fish. So, trout numbers were lower than the typical frequently-stocked streams.
The last day we fished some streams that are stocked. We had not seen any other anglers on the non-stocked streams, but there were plenty of folks fishing every one of the stocked streams we went to.
I didn’t fish it very long, but I did catch one brown trout on the Micro Gamechanger…so that was pretty cool.
As it turned out, most of the fish we caught on Day 1 were Brook Trout. I did manage to get the Trout Slam, though (Brown, Brook, and Rainbow). Most of the trout on Day 2 were Browns. Most of the trout on Day 3 were Rainbows.
Anyway…on to the pictures!
Jay caught this very colored-up awesome brookie:
and this one was pretty colorful too:
This was my Day 1 slam:
(There was a 10-photo limit on the previous post…)
Great trip! One tip…if you are in the area, stop and eat at Dave’s Gus & Tonys restaurant in Waukon. Excellent food, great prices!
Dave,
You’re going to make me learn to do some of those game changers. Nice crappie too…along with the rest of those piscatorial targets you have been pestering so well.
…lee s.
p.s. I just love pics of troutoids with ALL their fins. Such a rarity here in Ca.