I had a chance to fish for a couple hours last night after work, so of COURSE I took it!
I fly-fished a local public pond from about 5:45pm-7:45pm. First I tried a white beadhead woolly bugger, thinking it would get down where the fish might be in this cold water, plus it would be highly visible at night.
Nothing. Not even a hit.
Switched to an unweighted woolly worm in a darker color. Fished fairly shallow. I don’t know how a fish could see that fly at night in the water, I couldn’t see it at arms length from my face! But it worked! I ended up C&R’ing 18 crappies (8"-9" range…nothing big) and 2 largemouth bass (up to 14").
What a good night!
I should mention that the water temps here are cold. There was ice on the edges/shallows of most of the ponds around here on Monday, although the rain and temps in the low 40’s melted it off on Tuesday.
Dave,
They always suggest dark colors for fishing at night or in real dirty water. Not sure on the reasoning. Bet we’ll find out soon enough.
Kevin
Dave -
Sounds like a lot of fun.
Can’t imagine fishing that time of day ( night ) around here now, in the pitch dark, since I only fish moving water and I sure as heck ain’t gonna go wade around the South Fork in those conditions !!
Your experience is in line with what I have heard quite often - dark flies for dark conditions and light flies for light conditions. Hope you will go do A LOT OF EXPERIMENTS and post the results of your scientific study.
How about some pics ?? Those fish would probably look great lit up by flash with a pure black background !!
John
Dave
Ankeny, IA. Wow. Haven’t been through there since 1965. I was born in Council Bluffs. Went to Iowa State in Ames just north of you. Small world isn’t it.
Bob
Dark colors are almost always the best option at night because they silhouette well and provide an easier target for the fish. Most lures and flies designed for night fishing are either black, dark blue or dark purple.
Bob, indeed it is a small world! I graduated from ISU in 1990.
Fish definitely see better than humans…especially in the dark. I’m becoming a firm believer of that. 
I agree that a dark color would make a better silouette, but I often ask myself “a silouette against WHAT?” Dark against a dark background? Wouldn’t a light color show up better against a dark background? That’s what my reasoning tells me, and why repeatedly getting proved wrong is almost an epiphany. :rolleyes:
I thought about taking some pictures, but there was a misting drizzle, and I didn’t feel like getting my digital camera wet. It would be cool to get some of those nighttime pictures, though. Maybe I can get into some more fish soon and get some pictures. I tried a different pond last night after our fishing club meeting, and didn’t catch anything. Might’ve had a couple of hits…or they might’ve been rocks.
In the meantime, I’ll repost these from earlier this year…
Dang…no good night-time crappie pictures from this year (yet). How 'bout some daytimers?
Hm. I’m seeing a pattern here. Purple seems to be a good color for crappies ANYTIME! LOL
The silouette is against the sky. If you’ve scuba dived, look up toward the sky. Anything above you will appear as a silouette. The darker, the more pronounced the silouette. Nice fish. Wow. Hopefully things will hold up for I’m due in NE MO around Thanksgiving and hope to end my open water season there as is my tradition. JGW
Great work FishnDave! Catching fish is fun no matter what time of the year it is.
Have you had your kayak out this month? I really wanted to get mine out that day it was in the 70’s but didn’t have the time.
I’m also wondering if the DNR stocks trout in any lakes or ponds near you. They put the trout in our lake this last Thursday and I rushed right out and just had to fish them. I had a great time and even got one.
The DNR is going to stock trout in the ponds of the DMACC Campus. A little closer to all us in central Iowa.
Right on! The DNR stocked 1400 trout into DMACC Pond on Friday, Nov. 7th.
I’ve caught one so far…in about 90 minutes of fishing, plus one bass. The fish are surprisingly difficult to locate…
Nope. Although I suppose I could wear waders to help keep me warm and dry, I’m just planning to wait until Spring to get the kayak out again. I’m really looking forward to it!
Or maybe I should buy a wetsuit? At this time of year, with water temps in the low 40’s, a spill into the water could quickly prove fatal. I wanna be around to keep on fishin’! 
FishnDave wrote:
Right on! The DNR stocked 1400 trout into DMACC Pond on Friday, Nov. 7th.
I’ve caught one so far…in about 90 minutes of fishing, plus one bass. The fish are surprisingly difficult to locate…
.
I’ve had good luck finding the trout in our municipal lake. When it’s calm & warm, but mainly calm, they commonly come up to the top and feed there. And then there is the SW corner of the lake where it’s relatively shallow but deep water is nearby. Also the face of the dam is good.The spillway was running this weekend creating a bit of current & fairly shallow water extends out maybe 20 - 30 feet. The trout seem to like to cruise back & forth around there. Last Saturday morning the wind was calm & a large dense school of trout was cruising very shallow along the face of the dam creating “nervous water”, water that had ripples in it from the trout.
I’ve also had good luck with them by staying away from concentrations of other fishermen. These may be hatchery fish but they still have the nervous, spooky, excitable nature of wild trout. It just hasn’t been trained and fine tuned the way it is in wild trout.
And finally I’ve generally had my best fishing around dusk for them. Sometimes they just get stupid at that time of day and hit almost every cast.
Hope this helps.
EVERYTHING helps me! Thanks!
I hadn’t fished the dam area yet…its been pretty crowded, and I try to avoid the crowds.
One guy I know told me he did good one evening…found a spot where the fish seemed to be hanging out. When he cleaned the trout, he said many of them had apparently been eating corn. Must be some “chumming” going on! That doesn’t seem very sporting, but these are “put-and-take” fish.
Chumming corn for trout!!! I think I read somewhere that trout can’t digest corn. I just hope they can eliminate it from their system if they can’t because otherwise a lot of trout will go to waste.
One more thing about those trout…they seem to hang pretty high in the water so I use floating line when I go after them. I had been using type II sinking line when fishing for bluegill on my 4 wt but switched when I went for trout. I’ve also had my best luck with a black wooly bugger in size 6 and a small 1/80th oz jig in chartruse & white. This year for the first time I caught my possession limit of them. Now to see if my luck holds up.
Sweet! I have both those flies…except my buggers are probably size 8 instead of 6. Should work though.
How’s the water clarity in the small lake you’re fishing?
I can’t say exactly how clear the water is but it’s about the best it’s been all year. I’m pretty sure I can see the bottom well in at least 3 ft. of water and probably more. I should go out on a floating fishing dock that’s in a little deeper water and lower a large white fly until I can’t see it anymore and then measure how deep in the water it went. Not exactly scientific but it should give me a good enough idea of how clear the water is & what color flies to use.
Hope you catch some more trout on your fly rod before the pond freezes over.