What Did I Get For Being Grumpy? A Gorgeous Fricken Walleye!!!!

There's a carp there, tailing hard. Not possible to land such a fish in that spot...

Same spot and hour later. This is night fishing folks! 

I decided to fish the late evening-night time bite on my favorite pond. For a while I screwed around with a dragonfly nymph waiting for dark, then I changed over to a popper. There was a lot of life tonight. Pops, splashes, and toilet flushes could be heard all over the water. Small fish and insects came out to feed on micro invertebrates and protists, panfish and small game fish fed on them. Then the big species came in and slashed at the surface as they tore up there chosen food. Frogs, crayfish, little fish, and caddis all became food for bigger species. It's difficult not to catch fish under these conditions. The only fish I got on the popper was a nice smallmouth.

After a little while I put on a big jointed streamer and began first fishing a weed edge I know typically holds fish. Failing there, I went over by the dam, where species unknown where chowing on rockbass and bluegill in the spillway. One cast to the mouth of the spillway produced a big tug. I strip set and when I came tight to the fish I knew immediately that it could only be one of two thing. The head shakes and solid tugs were typical of the fight of either a walleye or a big catfish. I hoped it was the first. Then I saw it. The slim greenish bluish body and eyeshine meant it could only be one of two things: an walleye, or a fricken walleye!!!!! This species does not fight particularly well, so even though this fish was significantly larger than the smallmouth it took less than half as long. Careful not to be ripped open by the sharp gill plate or the big chompers, I landed the fish and was able to get a few pictures before freeing from it's jaws the big fly and releasing my first walleye on a fly rod! Then I broke into my happy dance. I must apologize to Drew LooknFishy, the fish Gods heeded my complaint without public humiliation, but I'm going for stripers tomorrow and they have eluded my flies for a while, so that may require such drastic measures. For now, I am more then happy with not only my first walleye on a fly, but the biggest of that species I have caught.

The disheveled look of a very pleased night fisherman.