Father’s Day Fishing

93 degrees with a heat index over 100 and 100% humidity.  That was the forecast for this past Father’s Day.  Seemed liked perfect weather to take a long walk on a dirt road with the sun beating down on my back.  At least I had enough sense to get up early before it got to hot.  But hey, it is Father’s Day and that means I can do whatever I want, within reason.  I was free of any Father’s Day obligations until noon so that gave me a few hours.  With all that in mind I was up and out the door early and starting my long walk with fly rods in hand around 7:00 am.

As I was walking along I could see some surface activity.  Didn’t know what it was but something was definitely feeding on something.  I figured the mayflies were hatching.  I was right.

There weren’t a lot of them but I managed to pick up a few hitchhikers during my stay.  The water was dead calm so spotting any carp was very easy.  Problem was they were in “I’m cruising to someplace else” mode and not “I’m Hungry” mode.  I tried but for the most part it was an exercise in futility.  I had a few turn towards my fly and acted like they showed some interest but never committed.  At one spot I set up and waited to see what might come my way.  I saw a carp slowly cruising in and made a cast way out in front of him.  As I was stripping the fly into range Bluegill #1 hit.  After I let him go I figured where there is one there is usually more.  Sure enough, about a dozen casts later and I brought about a half dozen nice sized gills to hand.

After awhile the area kind of petered out so I moved down to another area.  I stuck with the same carp fly and just started casting and stripping.  Figured I would catch gills, hoped a carp might actually hit, ended up with a surprise Largemouth Bass.  I was using my 8wt Scott Flex fly rod, overkill for gills but great for carp.  I was glad I had it when the Bass hit.  He didn’t make any great runs but he wanted to stay in the weeds and I had to put the brakes on him to prevent it.  I eventually got him to shore and after a quick pic sent him on his way.

After that I was getting tired of wiping sweat so I started my walk back.  I would stop and cast to any carp I saw that might show interest but in the end, none of them did.  I don’t know if it was the heat or the fact they might still be in spawn mode but I didn’t see any active feeders today.  Maybe next time.  I need to tie up some more carp flies in the burnt orange color.  I only have a couple left and it appears to work well for Gills and Bass.  One of these days I might finally figure out a pattern the carp will actually grab instead of ignore.

That was it for my Father’s Day Fishing adventure.  A handful of Gills, one bonus LMB and no Carp.  I was back home around 11 in enough time to go to breakfast with my kids and to see Incredibles II later.

Not a bad day.

Father’s Day Weekend 2015

Friday night, June 19th.  The end of another long week and for once no rain.  The last few weeks it has been on and off rain and water levels that are rising more then they are falling.  I needed a break and tonight was it.  I suggested to Susan that we should pick up a couple of subs and go eat them down at Willow Metro Park.  Of course the fly rod would be coming along for use after dinner.  We didn’t stay long but I managed to catch a few fish before the mosquitoes tried to carry us off.

Not very big but very colorful.

The next morning I headed out to the Detroit River to see if I could catch a few walleye for the freezer.  This was going to be my first real trip of the year.  I had gone out a few weeks ago but that was more of a screw around trip.  This time it was serious.  I was out of walleye and I needed some for myself and my parents.

I arrived at the ramp just in time to watch a bass tournament get all their boats launched.  Jump time hadn’t come yet so I had time to get ahead of them and get set up.  By 6:45 I was lines down and fishing.  Conditions were just about perfect.  NE wind at around 5 mph, overcast skies, clean water and no floating weeds or mayfly casings.  All I needed now was a few fish.  It didn’t take long and I had my first one on.  He hit a #9 Clown Rapala on my 40 foot lead.  As I was bringing him he came to the surface rather quickly and I could see he was barely hooked.  I thought to myself that he should just shake his head and get it over with.  He must have heard me because he did just that.  About 10 minutes later I had another one on the same lead and lure but this one stayed down.  After a few minutes I managed to get it up close enough to the boat to see it.  This fish was also barely hooked and it was a beast.  One more head shake and I got to watch her swim away as well.  I was beginning to think that this was the start of a very bad trip.  Fortunately though my luck changed and the next 5 I hooked were all landed easily.  These fish all came on the same orange and black spoon on my 20 foot lead.  Why they were hitting the spoon hard and not the Rapala has me a bit perplexed.  All I can figure is that the bigger fish were not in an active feeding mode and just taking a half ass swipe at the lure as it came by.  The spoon must have been easier for them to suck in.  I didn’t care, as long as they were in the cooler.

1st limit of 2015

After fishing I spent the afternoon down at Cedar Point with Susan and her brother and his family.  He has a boat in the Marina so we spent the afternoon there.  One of the other tenants came by to show off his fishing rod “set-up”.  He was really proud of the line…40 pound Berkley Fireline.  Why he needed that was beyond me but he was really proud of it.  One thing I did take notice of was the number of gnats and mayflies.  I wondered if they were going to be this bad back home.  As luck would have it I would find out later.

The next morning Susan and I were out once again but this time with my kids.  With it being Father’s Day they wanted to go to breakfast and see a movie.  After some Red, White and Blue pancakes from Denny’s we headed to the theatre to go see “Inside Out”.  My kids and I have been going to see just about every Pixar movie that comes out.  All these years we are still doing it and Pixar does not fail to produce fantastic movies.  This one was no exception.  If you do decide to go see it take some Kleenex.

Susan had to go to work that evening so I was free to do as I pleased.  Of course that meant another shot at the walleye.  This time around the conditions were a bit different.  Clear skies, bright sun, clear water and soon no wind.  I managed to pick up one walleye.

What really surprised me was how active the few remaining Silver Bass were after dark.  I didn’t catch many but the ones I did get were big.  Most were in the 14 to 16 range.  Some of these were Master Angler qualifiers but I wasn’t about to turn one in.  The worst part of the whole night was the bugs.  As it got dark I could see the mayflies starting to hatch and the gnats were right there with them.  At one point I had a green and red cloud of gnats at the bow of my boat.  Anytime I turned my headlamp on to see what I was doing I was instantly covered in gnats.  I got so sick of them I just cleared weeds and lines in the dark.  After about 30 minutes though it got to be to much and I just gave up.  Even back at the ramp they were ridiculously thick.  I’m still smacking bugs in the inside of my car.  I shouldn’t complain to much though.  It won’t last and I should be happy that the Silver Bass are clearing out.  I have all summer to catch fish.

 

Washago Pond 6/14/14

Nothing quite like an impromptu fishing trip.  Originally I was supposed to be busy all day and into the evening Saturday night.  My son was up from Florida and my parents were down to visit.  Everyone was getting together Saturday to visit Jacob, celebrate birthday’s and Father’s day.  When I went to go check Jacob in for his flight home and print his boarding pass there was a notice that his flight had been moved up by almost 3 hours.  That changed things a bit.  We still all got together but after I dropped him off at the airport everyone had left.  Suddenly I had my evening to myself.  After Susan and I finished cleaning up the house I asked her if she wanted to go read her book down at Willow Metropark and she agreed.  A few minutes later we were on our way.

When we arrived there was a fair amount of feeding activity on the surface.  I tied on one of the many foam flies I had tied up over the winter and let it fly.  Again the bluegill didn’t want anything to do with it.  I’m beginning to wonder if I used to heavy of a hook for these flies.  While I was busy trashing the water with my line I was able to see what the gills were feeding on, a small white caddis.  I dug out my trout fly box and of course I didn’t have anything like that.  I did have some size 14 cream colored parachute patterns so I tried one of those.  That did the trick.  Fishing wasn’t fast and furious but I managed to catch a few.  They weren’t monsters either but at least I didn’t get skunked and I got to spend some much needed time on the water.

First bass on a fly in two coon’s ages.

This is embarrassing. I stopped after this one.

Father’s Day Walleye 2012

Decided to make a quick trip down to the river tonight. I only planned on fishing for a couple of hours and I didn’t even get down to the ramp until 8 o’clock. I figured what was the rush? The last few trips all my fish have been caught after 9:00 pm anyways. As is usually the case things change. I set lines at 8:15 and once the weight hit the bottom, WHAM….fish on. That usually doesn’t happen for me but it sure is nice when it does. I continued fishing and picked up 3 more walleye in the next 45 minutes or so. I was thinking this was going to be a quick night but around 9:00 pm the SW died done to nothing and so did the fish, not even a smallmouth or silver bass. I don’t have a scientific reason as to why something like this would affect the fish but it does. I had caught all my fish traveling west to east so as near as I can figure that wind blowing at my back affected my speed. I tried to vary my speed to trigger a strike but to no avail. Shortly after 9:30 pm I hooked into a small walleye that I released for me to catch another day. After that I decided to pull lines and just head in. I had to work in the morning and I already had 4 fish to clean. I’ll take 4 keepers over 90 minutes of fishing any day.

Couple of interesting items about tonight. The first was that the Silver Bass are still in the area but they weren’t hitting my Spikes Spoons. On several different occasions I got caught in the middle of a feeding frenzy between the bass and the gulls. The gulls were picking away at the minnows on the surface and the bass were pushing them up from the bottom. I could see the silver bass rolling on the surface and for some reason they left my spoons alone. Thank God.

Another thing was I caught several 3 inch smallmouth bass and two of the walleye I caught had some in their stomachs. Catching them this small isn’t anything unusual but for this time of the year it is. Normally I don’t catch bass this size until late August or early September. Near as I can figure the bass had a really early spawn or these are hold overs from last year that didn’t grow very well.

The last little tidbit (and I am probably going to jinx myself for saying this) is that this makes 4 trips now without losing a single walleye or lure. Now that I have said this I am going to lose half a dozen fish and a whole rig the next time I’m out. It’s still a nice little streak to have right now, considering how notorious the area I fish is for claiming equipment.

The Green/Silver spoon with the pink dot is a new one I have never tried before.  It accounted for the 3 bigger fish tonight.  I’ll have to go dig through my storage box to see if I have anymore.  Once this gets out I’m sure some of my friends are going to want one.  Last year I was tearing up the fish on a pink and black spoon I found somewhere.  Several of my friends had their eye on it and I had to guard it continuously.