a fifty-fish day

A buddy invited me to join a few friends on a private pond somewhere south of San Jose.  He drove and I left my GPS at home so I'm not sure where we were but it was way back in the hills.  I'm told that the place rarely gets fished (maybe 3 to 4 times a year) so the fish have no idea that hooks hurt...

Here's a snippet of the shoreline where we were....the weeds you see along the shore cover maybe half the shoreline plus there are several dead trees sticking out of the water...plenty of good fishy spots:



 
Everybody that came was flinging flies...no spin gear anywhere in sight.

The pond is too small to bother with my Hobie Outback so I brought a float tube instead.  One of the guys had a bass on before we even got the tubes in the water.  You could see fish in plain sight from shore almost anywhere you looked.

I was the last one in the water so I kicked about half way across the pond before making my first cast.  For ponds like this, I like to start with a frog-pattern popper. some of the others started with fancier frog patterns, clousers, slump busters, etc.

Within a few minutes I had my first bass of the day on the line and everybody was catching something.  Some flies worked better than others (I never did get a decent hit on a realistic frog pattern my buddy loaned me but the frog popper worked great for me).
 
As I moved along the shoreline, I soon picked up a few more bass.  The best was about 16" long though the area is known for pretty big ones.

I saw a nice little gap in the weed line ahead and figured there had to be a fish there...seconds later, something was tugging like crazy on the other end of my line.  I knew I had a decent fish but when I saw it flash near the surface, I knew it was too short to be a bass.

Instead, it turned out to be an eleven inch bluegill.  Yeah, it's not going to give a dino sleigh ride but for bluegill fans, that's a pretty nice fish!  Great colors on it as well:




After that bluegill, I was cursed...it was almost all bluegill the rest of the day for me.  Everybody else was catching bass after bass but I'd rarely get one...instead, I was hauling in bluegill everywhere I went.

I changed flies after the first half dozen fish or so.  Once I know I'm not going to be skunked, I like to experiment with flies and tactics I don't normally use.  That lets me learn new things without going home smelling like Pepe Le Pew...
 
I also like trying flies that I came up with...though it's probably cheating to try them in such cooperative waters.  A while back, I merged a surf perch fly with a steelhead fly to come up with this:



The large rubber legs on it make it sink really slowly (despite the big metal bead head).  I caught fish with just it on the line but I almost fell asleep waiting for it to sink.  So, I added a clouser behind it figuring the lead eyes on the clouser would pull both flies down quickly.
 
That combination worked great!  The orange fly rocked...bringing in plenty of bluegill in the 9 inch range plus the occasional bass.
 
I had another unusual fly I wanted to try.  It was designed (not by me) for smallmouth and was known to have worked on trout as well, so what the heck...I gave it a try:
 

 
That worked great!  Troll that thing around about 30 ft behind the float tube and hang on.  It also worked when cast near the weed line then stripped back towards the tube.
 
Somewhere mid-afternoon, my catching stalled.  I swapped flies, tried various things, even fished parts of the pond I hadn't gotten to yet (but that I'd seen others catching in) but it was all going very slow for me.  Time for a bio-break...afterwards, I went back to the fancy frog my buddy loaned me and was working an area near him.

He was getting hits on it but it just wasn't working for me.  I tried another area...nothin.  During my break, I discovered I had one dragonfly fly with me (there were plenty of dragon and damsel flies around the pond).  I switched to the dragonfly, cast it near one of the dead trees by our launch spot and started feeding line while working out from the launch area a bit...wham!  A nice bass slammed it hard (and half destroyed my only dragonfly fly by the time I could land the fish and retrieve the fly...d'oh).
 
I tried the frog pattern popper again...but wasn't have much luck.  So I went back to the two-fly rig with the orange fly and clouser combo.  Trolling that behind me while kicking at a pretty good pace started racking up the fish.
 
I was catching fish out in the open, near the weeds, pretty much anywhere I trolled as long as I was moving at a good pace (or stripping it semi-quickly).  I added almost twenty fish to my count in the last hour or so of the day with that rig.
 
They were mostly bluegill still but once in a while a bass would come out to play too.  The clouser ended up being barely more than a hook with the eyes and a wee bit of deer hair left.  I'll have to take a pic of it and add it...it was amazing that the fish would still hit it with so little of it remaining.
 
I was at the far end of the pond when our host told us we needed to head in so we could get out of the backcountry before dark.  Trolling back, I ended up with several more fish including my first double hookup (fish number 49 and 50 for the day).
 
I had another double right as I got to the launch spot with a bluegill on the orange fly and a small bass on the clouser.  The bluegill shook off right at the tube so I ended up not counting it...final tally for me was fifty-one fish landed, plenty more lost while playing them, and a few zillion that I missed hooksets on.
 
I sure hope I get a chance to go back there some day.  I'll bring bigger flies and see if I can spend more time playing bass and less time enjoying big bluegill.

Sounds like a fun day.  Excellent report.

Hobieblue

Great report thwack. 5o fish days are to be relished! I have had a 47 and a 54 fish day in the last couple of weeks. It's a great feeling! 

Two 50-ish fish days in a couple weeks?!?!  Gratz!  It'll likely be a while before I get a full day of fishing like that. 

Where were you scoring like that?
 
Days like those are great learning experiences...plenty of time to try all sorts of new things.  Next time, I'm inviting some to dinner though.  This time, I was under the impression it would be catch & release only but after I got there (and left my stringer at home), I discovered we apparently could take some home (especially the bluegill).  Next time I'll be better prepared.

Great report - take a little 9' yak next time and I'll bet you like it even more.  The little yaks are so fun for small water - extremely manueverable and lightweight.  It might just be me - I can't picture toting a cooler of beer on the float-tube!   

Where were you scoring like that?
 
Days like those are great learning experiences...plenty of time to try all sorts of new things.  Next time, I'm inviting some to dinner though. 

Anderson. I don't know how long this will last and it has been very esporadic because of the weather changes. I have kept a couple lately but I try to keep the little ones because of high mercury concentrations in that lake.
How big are those flies you are using?

I can't picture toting a cooler of beer on the float-tube!   

You should ask Ken-fishinfool how he does it. 

Great report - take a little 9' yak next time and I'll bet you like it even more.  The little yaks are so fun for small water - extremely manueverable and lightweight.  It might just be me - I can't picture toting a cooler of beer on the float-tube!   

If I bring home another yak, my WAF will drop into deep negative numbers for a long time.  I have 3 Hobies already so picking up a fourth yak would likely not be a good move.  
 
On the other hand, my new float tube is an Outcast Super Fat Cat...and Outcast makes a custom coolor designed to fit right behind the seat:



The water in some parts of the pond was really shallow. While a little yak would no doubt skim right over the weeds, it would also keep my hands tied up instead of holding a rod.
 
The float tube let me troll with the rod in my hands because, like my Outback, my feet are providing propulsion and I can pretend I'm getting exercise all day.  
 
I had a Day Tripper tube from Water Skeeter and it's a pig.  I won the Super Fat Cat in a raffle earlier this year (for about $50 worth of tickets...not bad for a $350 tube).  The Super Fat Cat is pretty comfy too.  For those waters that a kayak is overkill for, the Super Fat Cat is a lot of fun.
 

How big are those flies you are using?

Thanks for the info.  Anderson is close enough to take a shot at if I can get away in the near future.
 
The orange beadhead flies with rubber legs I think are tied on a size 10 hook (2x or 3x long shank most likely...your basic woolly bugger hook).

The beadhead buggers (the ones with the bead chain on the back) are also tied on size 10 bugger/streamer hooks.  The beads are still connected to each other and held in place by wraps of the chenille that makes up the body.
 
Add a bit of rabbit strip to beef up the tail and/or wrap the body with hackle like a woolly bugger has and it has great action in the water.  The beads add just enough weight to help pull the fly down and make it ride with the hook up (Clouser-style) so it's a little less likely to hang up in the weeds, brush, etc.
 
Both are very simple flies to tie and could easily be tied on larger hooks (use the next larger size of beadchain and larger diameter chenille if needed).  Beadchain in larger sizes is easy to find at hardware stores (and you can get colors other than just the chrome/nickel look that the fly shops stock).

The legs on the orange fly came from a small koosh ball.  I found a couple different multi-color koosh balls a while back and nabbed them for fly legs.  Fifty cents per koosh ball for a ton of rubber leg material. 
 
Next time, I want to bring some big streamer flies...over-sized Clouser-style flies, etc.  I used size 6 or 8-ish Clousers and scored plenty of fish on them...but those are small enough that the larger bluegill can also get them.  So, I figure if I want more bass and fewer bluegill next time, I have to toss much larger flies.

I tried a mouse pattern for nada and gave up probably within twenty minutes.  The large frog pattern I tried also drew no love.  But the frog popper rocked (go figure).
 
I had a couple of Zen Worm flies but despite the big metal conehead, the stupid thing floated big time.  It's supposed to be a sinking surf perch fly but looked big and bulky so I figured bass might like it too...but I have to tweak the recipe to make it actually sink or maybe I'll take the conehead off, tweak the shape/colors, and see if I can make a new mouse pattern or something else the big bass might like to smack around...

Thanks thwack! You do some very nice work.

Nice report thwack!

I used to fish a private bass pond near Cool, south of Aubern.  Sometimes be on my fourth largemouth before it was light enough to see.  Gotta love fishing un-stomped waters!

Also, nice to see the fly fishing report!  I had my first casting lesson this weekend @ GG Park, and it was a blast.  Gonna chase some trout this coming weekend! Or at least sacrifice a bunch of flies to the trees!

Rick

compas fish are all bass too I think, no bluegills in the numbers.

compa I figured you have been busy!

compas fish are all bass too I think, no bluegills in the numbers.

compa I figured you have been busy!

Yea, they were all bass. But nothing wrong with 9"-10" gills on a fly! That's a blast if you ever fly fish.

Great report and great looking flies!    Sounds like you had a heck of a day.   I would never turn my nose up at a monster blue gill.  They are a beautiful trophy in their own rite, king of their kind. 

There are not many places where you can consistently catch that many nice fish.   But, you can do it at Henry Coe State Park - bass, big blue gills, crappie, greens - mostly on poppers or streamers.   But, its definitely a float tube place, not a kayakable place.

Thanks for the great fly pictures.   I am going to tie some of those up myself.   I have also found warm water species take very well to perch flies I use in the surf.

Thanks for the kinds words folks!  I sometimes feel like the oddball here tossing flies and fishing freshwater this time of year so it's great to see others speaking up about at least one of those. 
 
I don't have a regular fishing buddy so I haven't tried the salt yet...not going out there solo but I don't mind a solo adventure on Stevens Creek, Calero, etc.  I fish using "normal" gear maybe half the time but it's harder to find somebody that teaches spin tactics...much easier to find help on fly fishing (at least without having to pay professional guides).
 
I love bluegill on a fly rod.  They have attitude all the way to the net.  I've had trout that fight the hook for just a few seconds then just lay there as you haul them in and set them free.  But I've never had a bluegill give up like that....they're kicking and tugging every second of the way (and they taste good too).  I'll take a 9 inch bluegill over an 11 inch trout any day and get a better fight out of the deal.
 
My personal best ever bluegill record was bumped up a couple months ago to a full twelve inches. It was caught on a nightcrawler dangling from a rod in the back of my Outback while I was tossing poppers on a fly rod. 

The one in the pic in this thread is my new personal best on a fly...only an inch shy of the nightcrawler one and I'm told that pond has bigger bluegill. I hope to beat the overall personal best next time I'm out there.
 

fendente - gratz on the first lesson in fly flinging.  Plenty of places you can fly fish that don't need any/much casting skill.  Some new fly fishers hold off chasing fish while waiting for the casting to get great...no need to do that.  Especially if you have somewhere to fish moving water (current can make up for casting and get you into fish just fine).
 
If there's a club near you, join up and dive into the stuff they offer.  There are some incredible clubs in the Bay Area...they have lots of low-cost classes, fishing trips to cool local-ish places, and sometimes you can even find an experienced member will to mentor on a fishout for no cost.  Lots of experienced fly flingers like helping get new folks into the game.

Don't start tying your own flies though unless you have plenty of spare cash and a spare room at your house to hold all the supplies...    (but it can be the only way to get a fly that looks like what you want)

Spending the time to learn a bit about entomology, hatches, etc has helped my non-fly fishing as well as my fly fishing.
 
I don't claim to be any good at it, but I'm willing to try answering whatever questions I can...start a thread in the right forum or send a PM.


Flyaker - thanks for the info on Henry Coe.  I've wanted to hit that for a long time and haven't gotten there yet (danged day job really eats into my fishing time).  Which parts of Coe are you hitting with the float tube (and please don't say Mississippi Lake cuz that's a mean hike from what I've read!)
 
It might not be clear from the pics, but the legs on the orange beadhead fly are tied under the body wrap with a wrap of chenille inside each leg pair to help keep the legs spread nicely.  I doubt the fish care but I think it makes the fly look a little nicer.

hey, Thwack -
I love fishing bue gills on a light fly rod.  It is the essence of pure joy.   Only thing that comes close is when you get into a bunch of brookies, but thats a different kind of joy.

I fish flies almost exclusively, unless i am taking my 8 year old out, in which case i bring a spinning rod.   I think i have caught about 40 species on flies, going down to about 90 feet in depth.

Like you, i havent ventured out to the big blue by kayak yet, but i will, once i get some safety and technique training behind me. 

I also work M-F, spend time with my kid, so my fishing/kayaking  time is a bit limited.  But, i get out every chance i can.

As to Henry Coe -  if you dont mind a rigorous hike, it is a great fishery.    I did fish Mississippi Lake this year, but i went in during hte 'Back Country' weekend, when they open up the bell station entrance, which cuts the hike down to about 4.5 miles.    The closer lakes to fish are Kelly and Coit.    Kelly has big blue gills, almost all 9 inches that will smash a popper, lots of black crappie, and plenty of bass.    Coit has bass and green sunfish.   I love greens too.

Nothing like blue gill tacos after a hard days fishing.

Give me a shout if you want to fish together some time.   Like I noted above, its hard to find a break in the schedule, but i will fish any chance i can get.

LAwrence