It had rained hard one night. We got nearly two inches. Not enough to break the drought, but enough that driving into a pond could be a problem. The rain came so fast that a lot of it ran into the ponds. This made the water a little murky. Still it was time to fish.
I headed out with two boxes of flies and graphite and boo rod. Most of the flies were ones that I had received or experiments I had tied up. I hiked in so I would come in at one end of the dam.
I made several casts with the flies I had one and got nothing. I moved about 30 feet and tried again, and I picked up a few gills doing this. I decided it was time to try a few other flies. You never know how they will work if they don’t get in the water.
One was a boa yarn leech with some red eyes from a necklace I got on sale. The necklace looked like it would make eyes on a fly, so it is now in my stash. Here is a picture of one of the flies I tied with the material from the necklace.
This happened to be the first fly I tried in the second set of flies. I cast it out and let it drop a few feet. When I started to retrieve the line it felt funny and I set the hook. I had a nice crappie on the line. After some experimenting it appeared that the fish seemed to hit on the drop. I tried it a few more times and got a fish each time. Curiosity struck and I tried the other fly, with no red eyes, and got nothing; so it was back to the red eyes.
Turned out I could get three to five fish out of each area. I tried several other patterns and rarely got a fish. Then I found another experiment in the second box, a Hares ear with red eyes. I tied it on and started catching fish again. Then I tried an all red fly and a Royal Coachman and got nothing.
Someday I may figure out why the red eyes were so important that day. What will probably happen is that I will give up and just fish. But I will still wonder. My better half says the fish will drive me nuts.
I did see a few other folks come into the pond to fish. There is plenty of room for everyone. At least that is what I thought. Two of the folks saw I was catching fish and came and stood a foot on either side of me. I must say they caught nothing. I told them I would leave them this place, but if they followed me again I would be unhappy.
I moved about 50 feet from them, and started catching fish again. The I noticed that another person was coming down toward me. He stopped about 25 feet away from me and waited until I had the fish in and asked if he could see what I was using. I showed him and he was intrigued. We talked and I found out that he was trying to get a meal of fish. I gave him a Hares Ear with red eyes and had him cast out and let it drop. He took a couple times to find the depth, but then he started catching some fish.
I had great fun watching him catch the fish. I decided that I needed to leave since I had about a half mile hike. More fish in the basket would make it harder.
As I was leaving he asked how I cleaned the fish. When I told him that I filleted them, he asked if I would show him how. I told him how to get to the house and I would meet him. I got home and had most of my fish done before he got there. I showed him how I do it and let him watch a few. Then I had him do a few of his. I did help him get his done.
It was fun day. Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick
Originally published July 1, 2013 on Fly Anglers Online by Rick Zieger.