• Sunday, August 08th, 2010
I went fishing tonight, at a family farm pond. I haven’t had my fly rods out in about 20 years or more, and haven’t seriously fished for much longer. But Brian said he threw three worms in last week and caught three nice bluegills, and the weather was just so cooperative today, and I finished all my mowing, so about 7pm I was over there with my two 30-some year old rods and my 40-some year old vest and ready to fish.
My goals for the evening were modest:
1. Find out if my equipment still works.
2. Find out if my muscle memory for fly casting still works.
3. Drop at least a few flies into the water right where I intended to drop them.
4. Catch a fish.
… and if those work, then the list expands to:
5. Catch a keeper.
It was a beautiful evening. When I first arrived at the lake a heron flew away, the goose flock was at the far end of the lake, a kingfisher rattled away across the lake to a dead tree, and a doe and fawn were getting a drink down near the geese. The day’s wind had died, making the pond flat as can be, and the sky was gorgeously colorful, with little yellow rims on the little puffy clouds.
Unfortunately there was not a fish rise to be seen on the pond surface. Nada. But I paid out some line and started flexing my arms and working the line and dropped my little red dry fly out near some lily pads. More nada. I fished ten minutes without a bite, but I met my first three goals pretty easily. It’s hard to kill decent fly fishing gear, and I’m just not that out of shape, so I focused more on #4. I changed rods and put on a white streamer fly. About then a fish rose in the lily pads, and then rose again a little closer to the edge of the pad cluster. I dropped my fly right next to the pads, but had a bit of excess line paid out by my feet. So the fly rested there a moment longer than I intended while I gathered in the excess and when I finally took up the slack (it’s only been a few seconds, really) Bingo, Fish On. Forgetting for the moment that I was fishing for little bluegills and not lunker bass or Bahamian snappers, I reared back with the rod to set the hook and a 6″ largemouth bass flew out of the water across 10 feet or so and landed in the weeds near my feet. Oops! He was fine and swam off a moment later.
Brian came over the hill and beckoned to go to the other side of the pond. It was a good choice… my side faced west into the sun. I followed, and caught and returned another small bass, and then Brian said Hey What Do You Think The Bucket Is For? Turns out we were keeping our catch to stock the little swamp drainage pond that sources most of their mosquitoes. Natural pest control. Brian just made my Goal #5 a lot easier. I caught that same bass, or his brother, about three casts later, and then suffered a little drought. The fish just weren’t rising, and weren’t biting. Brian had tried a worm, a popper, a frog and back to the worms and had only caught one bluegill. But as the sun got lower, all of a sudden they started hitting my flies just about every cast. Only once did I get a hit at the surface… all the rest were on a fairly fast retrieve, pulling in the line to make the fly act like a minnow trying to escape. I caught three in three casts at one point.
It was a great evening, and I even got home before it was completely dark, in time to shut up the chickens for the night. We filled up a stringer plus a couple more in the bucket… I think we took 11 or so fish (half bass, half bluegills and sunnies) to the mosquito pond. I caught twice or thrice what Brian caught, which is a first for me. I never catch more on flies than the bait fishing folks I’m with. But he did have 1 year old Sophie in his arms most of the time, and he did switch bait and tackle a fair bit. Maybe next time I’ll try taking Sophie for some of the time. Maybe.