What a Blast

What a Blast

Rick Zieger - Oct 4, 2010

It has not rained for several days, and the wind has been blowing so it’s time to head to my favorite pond. I’m sure that I can get in, but will stop short of the bad spot to make sure. Turns out that it is not bad and I get into the pond.

I get there and get everything unloaded. Anticipation is running amuck. I know there are fish in this pond and it will just be a matter of finding what they want. There is nothing near the edge, but this did not surprise me a lot.

I get the canoe out and start making some casts. I have a popper and an emerger pattern I am trying. I don’t get any fish interest in these, so I try another fly, let it drop and have a fish take it. I work the fish up close and see that it is barely lip hooked. The fish flips on the surface, before I can get it netted.

I try another cast and let the fly drop and have another fish take it. Work this fish in and manage to get it in the net before it throws the hook. It was barely lip hooked.

On the next cast I let the fly drop a little longer and have another fish on, but the fish gets up on the surface and flips the hook as it thrashes on the surface. I decide to drop down a size on the hook and see if that help, but I’m still lip hooking them. I hook a number of fish, but don’t get many to the net.

I to try another pattern and have about the same result. I’m hooking a lot of fish, but not a lot to the net. But some fish were coming to the net. Over the next several minutes I tried a variety of patterns and the results were the same. A fish would hit the fly, but most were barely lip hooked and would come off when they got up on the surface.

Next I attempted a variety of things to keep the fish under the surface. Most of the things that I tried to do to keep the s fish subsurface did not work. I tried the rod tip low to the water and even a little under the surface, I tried to retrieve the fish in slowly. The fish were all barely lip hooked and nothing was going to change that. I even tried some size 18 PTN and the fish were still lip hooked, so I went back to larger hooks as they were easier to get out of the fish. Having tried everything I decided that most of the fish would get off, but that some of them would come to the net.

After spending quite a bit of time trying to correct my problem I needed to leave since the thirst meter was running and that is a good indication that I have spent a long time on the water. When I got everything loaded I realized that the fish basket was full.

Arriving at home I had the fish filleted in about 35 minutes. As it turned out I had 58 fish in the basket. I know that I lost at least 3 fish for everyone that I landed, but I had a blast. There was a strike on almost every cast. I may not have landed all of them, but they sure did like what I was putting in the water.

Had lost of fillets to share with folks.

Hope you can get out on the water.
Rick