A Good Evening on a Pond

Last night I was able to run up to our family farm and fish one of my favorite ponds.  I have fished this body of water for close to 20 years now and have seen it cycle.  I have caught 2 bass out of there that have weighed 6 pounds or more and a few five pounders but it has been years since that happened.  For the last few years the bass have been stunted and were about 12 inches long.  While they aren't big, there are plenty of them and they are joined by some decent bluegill and catfish.  I hadn't fished here in a long time and was interested to see what shape the fish were in.

After using some spinning tackle and catching a few, the wind died down and I got out my fly rod.  I tied on a new wooly bugger pattern that I was excited to use.  It had a conehead, olive tail with some flashabou, white pearl chenille body, and olive grizzly hackle on a size 6 hook.  I liked it because it has flash but it's a muted flash and not gaudy.  It also sank incredibly fast because I put a few wraps of lead wire behind the cone.  This served two purposes- to keep the conehead from moving and to get it to sink even faster.  I am also proud to say that it did both.

I fished it around the edges of submerged grass because that's the only cover in this pond.  I noticed that I could feel when the hook was bringing in some grass.  I also learned that one good, hard strip of line would cause the hook to cut through the grass and I could continue my retrieve.  This was extremely helpful knowledge.  However, I haven't mentioned whether it actually caught fish.

YOU BET IT DID!  Now I'm not going to tell you that this was my greatest evening of fly fishing that I have ever had, but this fly caught bass and bluegill consistently.  I was also glad to see that the "stunted" status of the pond might be changing because I caught some bigger bass than usual.  Some fish hit the fly the instant it hit the water and some fish hit close to the boat.  All of the bites were aggressive and some came on longer casts which was fun!  This fly will be available in my Etsy store soon because it earned that status that evening.  In fact, as soon as I am done posting this, I'm going to my vise to tie up a dozen or so!