Summertime, and the livin is easy…

Fish are jumpin, and the cotton is high…

Recent sunny and muggy days have drawn me to the childlike romance and innocence of fishing ponds for sunfish and largemouth bass. Warm water opportunities abound in the Midwest. Ponds and small lakes are literally everywhere. This little pond was packed with eager fish chasing dragonflies. They literally jumped out of the water after the bugs. My little popper didn’t quite look like a dragonfly, in fact, one would have to have Timothy Leary eyes to see a size 12 chartreuse popper as anything remotely resembling a dragonfly, but the cooperative fish were abiding by the philosophy “If it is on the surface and moving, it must be food.”

There is an inherent joy to ponds. No pressure or pretensions, plenty of room to cast, and spontaneous laughter when tiny bass come unglued in attempts to eat your popper. I recognized the laugh. It came from the ten-year-old boy within me.

Shallow ponds like these are simply made for the fly-rod. No other form of fishing can deliver food with the little ‘splat’ that drives pond-dwelling fish nuts. The best technique is simply to ‘ring the dinner bell.’

A good reminder that fly-fishing is supposed to be fun. Who cares if I couldn’t remember the Latin name for dragonflies as my shoes squished in the swampy ground and my shirt, pants and hands smelled like fish.

That frosted mug of root beer at an A&W afterwards tasted pretty good too.

Warm water wanderings

I would make the argument that the fly rod is the ultimate panfish and bass angling tool.

Presenting small artificial food objects and making them twitch and move seductively to cooperative fish is one of the joys of fly fishing that so many people pass up. On a trip to an area pond recently, the bobber and worm anglers were skunked and went home, while my friend Eric and I cleaned up. What was the difference?

1. Fish like to eat things that look like food they see every day. Small buggy poppers are more representative of the common foods in a pond than nightcrawlers.
2. Bobbers make a HUGE splash on the water, literally scaring away the fish for several minutes after the cast, while a fly rod can deliver a 'fly' with a satisfying and attractive splat.
3. Fishing with worms, the angler is hoping that a fish swims by the worm, sees it wiggling or smells it, and eats it. The fly angler attracts the fish to the fly.
4. Many fish are looking up for their food. Largemouth bass are notorious for this, and suckers for well presented poppers.
5. With a fly rod one can make five or ten casts in a minute and cover a huge amount of water.

I learned a few things about presentation this last week. Instead of casting out my small poppers across the water, I began to cast them at the water like one would splat a beetle against cover on a trout stream. This made all the difference. I was able to hit the water with the small popper, make it splat, pause for a few seconds, pop it, pause..., pop it again, and then make another cast to new water. The bass liked any gap in the weeds, and often were tight to shore and cover. Instead of 75 foot casts, we were making 15 to 20 foot casts. Interesting...It was like target shooting. Once we figured it out, it was almost unfair as the fish became unglued in their exuberance to eat our poppers.

This leads me to another thought on fly fishing. More than any other angling technique, it is a thinking man's sport.
The discovery and questioning/exploring/learning process is as fun as catching fish. A trip is often ended with the words "Well, we figured it out!" I saw this in Lake Michigan recently where I took my friend Eric to fish for small rainbows holding in a heavy outflow. The local fishermen were trying to throw slip bobber rigs, crank baits, and worms to the fish holding in water that has the characteristics of a river. Some of the bait they were using was the size of the fish being pursued. We analyzed the situation and used small streamers swung in the current to successfully catch the fish. The locals were not very friendly.
All we had done differently was to actually analyze the situation at hand. It made all the difference!

Anybody can do this. Just get a cheap flyrod combo, a bunch of poppers and small streamers, and go exploring.
Let the learning begin.

The pure joy of the unpretentious panfish

This last year I rediscovered the pure joy of fishing for sunfish. I had forgotten them or moved passed them in order to pursue more 'mature and intellectual' targets such as trout. In coming back to these colorful little fish, I rediscovered the innocent and uncomplicated fishing I enjoyed as a youth. It was if I had stepped into a time machine. I found again a world of pleasure before pretensions; before we wondered if we could name drop enough Latin entomology to fit in at the local fly fishing club; a time before we wondered which wine complimented a certain flyline; a time before ego, and before seriousness petrified our laughter. It was and is again, an un-pressured fishing, where you may catch three dozen fish or only a dozen, and not give a damn either way. I didn’t really care how big they were, because they were all so eager to eat pretty much anything that I threw to them and hook themselves, that I was too busy having fun landing fish to even think about it.

The little fish have character. They never stop fighting with their tiny spunk and energy. It makes you giggle.

One thing that became apparent as I floated around area lakes and ponds, was the absolutely deadliness of fly fishing as a technique to catch panfish. Again and again, I passed people fishing with sunk worms and bobbers, and picked up fish left and right of them. I began to feel kind of guilty. The little fish displayed so much eagerness for my foam bugs that several would come out of the water and dive down onto the bug to take it from above. It was sort of like teasing a kitten with a ball of yarn or a piece of string. I could cast to shore and let my fly sit still for a half a minute, then twitch it a bit and watch the water literally boil as the fish competed with each other to get to it first.

Unlimited fun. Such spunk.
A heck of a way to spend an afternoon.