Nymphing Pike, Getting Slapped by Catfish

Not all that eat nymphs are trout. If I had one recommendation for multi-species fly fisherman, it would be to learn the ways of the nymph, as in depth as possible. My biggest largemouth? Nymph eater, bigger than 8lbs. Most of my biggest fly rod smallies? Nymph eaters. Fly carping without an understanding of aquatic insects and how to fish nymphs isn't going to yield great results. My best bowfin ate a dragonfly nymph. When I'm trying to catch a new species in freshwater, odds are knowing a thing or two about nymphing is going to help.

That being said, I don't think you need to fish nymphs for pike. And yet, while hoping for smallmouth and catfish a few nights ago, that skinny little gator up there at my Hare's Ear in 10 feet of water. Not what I expected. I would have been less surprised to get a hogchoker, a flatfish I'd encountered there in the past via netting baitfish.

 I alternated between fishing just an artificial fly and fishing one with a worm on it. I would not be so silly as to call the latter fly fishing, but even when I fish bait a lot of the time it is a fly rod that I use to do it. I feel I learn much from it, dirty though it may be. Tonight the fly only took that small pike. Live bait won out. No surprise. Smallmouth, bluegill, American eel, channel catfish, and white catfish all were duped by the old standby of baits.

Noah' lifer white catfish.

 After dark the whiteflies came out. It was a hatch spinnerfall combo, and these bugs did something I hadn't seen: they molted into their spinner form on the water instead of in the brush, leaving little dun husks all over the surface. The lack of rise activity told me they were pretty safe doing this. Were it the Housatonic the smallies would have been all over those molting duns.

This photo in every way represents what catching eels on hook and line is like. It stops being fun almost immediately. 

Well after dark I heard and saw some of a fish jump very much unlike ones I have seen before in the river, namely carp. This one, I am almost certain, was a sturgeon. I have seen one in the water in the past but it has been a while. 

I'll leave you with some catfish slapping fun. I think this little guy has been lipped once or twice before. He knew were to throw his tail.