August 23, 2015

Date: August 23, 2015

Body of Water: Blue Springs Lake

Weather: Breezy with cloudy skies that eventually cleared by noon

Air Temperature: Middle 60's early in the AM but rising into the 70's by noon

Water Condition: Stained but at a normal level

Wind Speed & Direction: Out of the north and less than fifteen mph

Moon Phase: First Quarter

Fishing Equipment: Nine foot, eight weight fly rod with sinking tip section

Flies/Lures/Bait: The brave, a shad imitating fly, and a white gurgler.

Hatches or Fish Behavior Observed: Carp jumping sporadically, some shad flipping and in the early morning.  Most fish on the fish finder were suspended between eight and twelve feet.

Species Targeted: Hybrids/Wipers, White Bass, and Largemouth

# of Fish Hooked: 1

# of Fish Landed: 1

# of Fish Released: 1

# of Fish Kept: 0

Largest Fish Description: 11 inch largemouth bass

What Happened:

My buddy Pat and I hit the water right around first light.  We put in at the dam on Blue Springs Lake and fished halfway up the dam and around the first cove and point to the south of the ramp.  We didn't want to stray too far since my small boat only had a trolling motor and neither of us wanted to paddle back to the ramp if the battery died.  Pat was rigged with chicken livers and going after hybrids while I was fishing a fly for whites and hybrids.  We marked a lot of fish on the finder but Pat was the only one of us to land a fish.  He landed a 1-2 pound channel cat and that was it.  We would drift and move, drift and move.  I was fishing with a sink tip and having to count to 20 or thirty to get the fly down enough to actually put in in front of a fish.  I had never done this before and I found that it required some patience.  However, it was a beautiful morning and Pat is a great guy to fish with.
At around 9:30 we decided to head over to Woods Chapel Road and fish the sunken timber as well as what locals refer to as "the blow hole".  We headed straight for this spot and it was certainly acting like a blow hole.  I'm still not sure of the physics and mechanics behind the spot, but essentially this is where water from Lake Jacomo drains in to Blue Springs Lake.  How it drains is the unique part.  Water just seems to boil up out of lake as if fed by a huge spring or water main break.  We both got pretty excited when we saw the current as well as shad fleeing from some unseen predator.  We immediately started casting and felt pretty confident that we would get a bite soon.  Pat threw a shad colored shallow running crankbait and I threw a shad fly that Matt Sutton from Rainbow Fly Shop gave me.  After 30-45 minutes and no bites, we concluded that we were doing something wrong.  The baits might have been to big, or we were fishing too fast/slow, or maybe we were fishing the current incorrectly.  Regardless, we will be going back and figuring that spot out.

Notable Fish

Time: 11:30

Size: 11 inch bass

Fly/Lure/Bait Used: white gurgler

Location: in the submerged timber section of Blue Springs Lake near the kayak/canoe boat ramp.

What Happened:

With our morning on the water drawing to an end, I was trying really hard to put a fish in the boat but was unwilling to go after bluegill.  I spotted a lay down near a bank that had a large amount of flooded vegetation and thought it looked like a good largemouth hangout.  I had made casts to similar structure further down the bank, but thought this log might be the one.  I put a gurgler right in front of the log, twitched it a couple of times and a small bass hit it with ferocity.  He didn't fight hard and he wasn't very big, but he was pretty and kept my morning from being remembered as a goose egg.  It's funny that small fish like that are much prettier when you aren't catching many of them.