Another Good Day on the Water with the Unnamed Streamer

After fishing the unnamed streamer on one occasion, I decided that more data needed to be collected.  I know what you might be thinking.  "Is this guy going to take the fly to a farm pond and call it 'effective' if he catches a bunch of fish on it?"  That statement would be understandable because I do that a lot.  If farm pond fish will eat the fly, then that tells me that it is ready to move on to other fisheries.  I use farm ponds as "proving grounds" on many occasions.  The farm pond that I went to was a little different than other haunts.

I had never caught a single bass out of the pond that I went to.  I heard they were in there.  I heard about other folks catching fish there.  Heck, I even helped stock some of the fish that I hoped were still in the pond, but I had never caught anything out of the pond.  I figured that made the conditions a little more challenging, and thus, a little more interesting.  

To make a long story short, I did catch some fish and the fly performed extremely well.  I caught 5-6 fish and almost every one smashed my fly with reckless abandon.   Since the fly doesn't sink much and I wasn't fishing out of a boat, I threw it in the shallows.  I was hoping that the bass were either still in prespawn mode and crushing anything that moved or just recently spawned and hadn't moved to cover just yet.  I think they had all spawned but were still happy to run down my erratic streamer.  

On another outing at Rocky Hollow Park in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, I landed a 15 inch largemouth as well.  While this lake is a solid largemouth fishery, I arrived later in the morning than I would have preferred and the bass MIGHT have been spawning.  I fished the fly around heavy cover and structure to avoid snags.  I only got hung up twice and both occasions were due to poor casting.  The fly has such a slow sink rate that it never had a chance to get deep enough to get snagged on rocks, vegetation, or laydowns.  I tried to work the fly above the structure and it worked out perfectly.  The one solid eat that I got came from a little pocket on the bank that was surrounded by boulders.  Honestly, it felt more like a smallmouth eat on an Ozark stream than a largemouth take on an impoundment.

This fly is just about perfect to me.  It sinks slow and has a great side to side motion.  If stripped correctly, it will go from facing left to facing right.  When paused, it sinks slowly with it's head pointed down but when stripped, it's head rises and zooms to the surface like a dying baitfish.  It seems like this fly can do a little bit of everything and that includes catching fish...thankfully!  This fly might very well end up in the online store, soon!