Stillwater Stuff

After Rik and I left the brook trout stream the other day we went to a small pond with a broad assortment of fish species. Right away I spotted a carp. Shots were made, the fly was ignored.

These days the bass in the smaller ponds are starting to spawn. There were a few beds in this pond. I found two with small males on them. Clearly they had been pressured, they had no interest in reacting to out flies. Rik found a 3lb or so female on a bed, she hit on of his flies but quickly got finicky. This stuff brought back memories. Ah, the days when I would stand over a bed casting a jig and craw on a bed trying to annoy it's occupant enough to get a reaction strike. Fun stuff. Annoying as hell sometimes, but still fun.

No bass were caught by either of us. I did manage a pretty decent assortment of panfish though.

The next day I went out looking for carp at my local spot. I came a knocking and the carp went a hiding. Yet there were bluegills rising all over the flat, and I had no real dry flies. I had to make do with a foam corn fly. It worked. Bluegills, great as they are, just aren't so smart....

As far as subsurface activity goes, I caught  couple yellow perch. Nothing special. As far as this pond goes, this was a pretty bland day.

In the afternoon Noah and I went to get some stillwater trout, something I try to do at least a couple times a year. As in always the case there were tons of trout rising at the pond and only some were within reach. Noah struck first, his first ever rainbow on a jointed rapala. It took  me a while to get into fish too but eventually I got my first stillwater trout of the year, also a rainbow. This pond has highly stained water, almost black, so the fish tend to be very dark. The ones we caught today were no exception. They were essentially black. 

I caught a crappie too, and it was also fairly dark. I'll add now that I was switching out between the 5wt CGR and my 11'5" TLr  short spey depending on casting distance and space behind me. Obviously a log 8wt rod is not the optimal tool for hooking and fighting relatively small stocked trout, but I'd be hard pressed to find a better rig to get a fly way out into that meatball of fish in the middle of the pond with next to nothing back cast space wise. I was glad I brought it. 

I've been a step or two behind, I'll try to catch up tomorrow. There's one more in the "convergence" series and some trout stuff, stay tuned.