Bass

One thing I just can't wait for this spring and summer is some great bass fishing. I've been tying poppers, Dahlberg Divers, Clousers, and big ass woolly buggers in prep for the coming season. My goal this year is to get a largemouth in the double digits. I know that is a really lofty goal, especially for a fly fisherman in CT (I have only ever caught one bass over ten and that was on spinning gear), but I am willing to go to the effort needed to target those bigger fish. Yes, that means there will be quite a few posts this year of kayak trips in as many lakes and rivers as I can hit. The ones that I am looking at most are Pocotapaug, Moodus Reservoir, Gardner, Great Hill, and a few super secret ponds I have looked into. One in particular has me more than a little excited.

On a related note, the night I caught the bass in the picture bellow was extraordinarilly frustrating. There were boils everywhere, we could here some big fish coming up and gulping something. I stuck to poppers because that just made sense to me. This was the only taker. It wasn't until later that I noticed the flies in the picture and remembered being bombarded by some large non-biting bugs for several hours, of course a good hatch was on and the fish were actually being selective. Looking back, had I tied on a Grey or White Wulff I probably would have caught about twenty fish in all that time I was persistently bombing the pads with a huge popper.