LIGHT BITES
Rick Zieger - Mar 07, 2016
It was a good day to head out. I had no other activities that required attention and the weather was fairly nice. I picked a pond that I could hike into, but a difficult place to take the canoe. I took a 3 weight and a 5 weight rod and I even put my vest on.
I drove out to the area where the pond is and hiked in and then I found out that there had been a fire, as we are very dry, and the brush in one area of the pond was gone. The long grass around the pond was also burned off. The pond was a few feet low, and I found out later that was because the fire department had to use water out of the pond to fight the fire.
I came in from the west and knew that the water on the east side of the pond is very shallow. The south end where the dam is and the west side have some deeper water. I went to the southeast corner and start casting. I had a black boa yarn fly and a hares ear fly on the two rods. I cast each of these several times and get a couple of decent gills. I did not know that they were on the line. When I started to lift the line to cast again there was a fish on it. I moved along the dam about 30 feet and got set up again. I cast with each of the rods and picked up a few more fish. Most of the time I did not know the fish were on the line. I changed flies to see if the fish would hit harder on something else. I put a white boa yarn fly and an olive soft hackle to see what they would do. I made several casts with each fly and got a few more fish. The fish were still not hitting hard. No motion on the fly line when a fish hit. So it was time to try different flies. I put on a white "only" fly and an orange eyelash yarn leech pattern. I made several casts in that place which produced a few more fish. Still the fish were not hitting with any authority. Even by being paranoid about watching the end of the fly line does not show anything.
I moved along the dam and changed flies again. I put on a Silver Goldie Jr. and a woven wire Price nymph. I cast these several times and picked up a few more fish. I still did not see any movement of the fly line to indicate a strike. I finally decided that about every couple of feet I would do a strike motion with the rod. I was wondering how far out the fish were. There was no pattern to this, but more fish are caught. I got a few fish in every spot that I stopped.
I got along the west side of the pond where there is a break line about 20 feet out that drops from six feet deep at the dam to about ten foot halfway up the pond. The water drops down about five feet all along this break line.
This is a place to find fish all summer long in this pond. I got into more fish along this area. By randomly setting the hook as the fly was just over the break line resulted in several fish, but still no solid strikes. I tried another dozen flies that each got a couple of fish, but no hard strikes.
I decided to head home and take care of the fish. The wind had come up and it felt much cooler than the real temperature was. When I got in the truck it was much warmer than being out in the wind.
Had fillets to eat and share.
Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick