My daughter created a fishing club and they took their first outing recently.
Here's some of the results.
There were two fly rods and three ultralight spinning rods in play. The spinning with little tiny curly tail grubs on #4 were the pickerel catchers exclusively. I did get some bumps though on my fly, and caught myself a brook trout as a "consolation prize." haha. Well I think it was a triumph actually--as this creek was not stocked since March!.
https://www.instagram.com/choatefishingclub/
These little pickerel are really lively and neat looking. And they wriggle all over the place. Really difficult to catch when they fall on the ground!
If you look them up, they are native to Connecticut and a close relative to the grass pickerel which lives further south and they rarely grow longer than 12." They like muddy bottomed streams, and they rarely come out to play unless the water is really low and clear, which is exactly what it was like. This stream is a torrent in the spring but a trickle in the late summer--even after the wet midsummer we had.
There is something endlessly fascinating about the relationship between the inland riverine and the coastal littoral, and there is no better place to fall in love with appreciating and exploring this interaction than where I live: coastal Connecticut. Within the tidewater (on the predominately freshwater end of it), less than 2 miles from the open Sound, I've caught yellow perch, largemouth bass, fallfish (a member of the chub/dace family) and of course stocked and holdover trout. (The wild sea run salmo trutta will come someday). In this water, at the very same time, I've seen alewives, peanut bunker, large menhaden and blue crabs both living and dead. The striped bass and bluefish chase these baitfish all the way up the river and feast on them--side by side with the resident largemouth bass. One of these days there will be the possibility of catching both the saltwater stripers and the freshwater largemouths out of the same water at the same time!
Here is a fallfish taken from my "homewater" on Sunday morning, just 1 mile from my house and 2 miles from the sound:
My business peregrinations take me through central/northern/eastern Connecticut on a regular basis. There are dozens of rivers, streams, brooks and even lakes there that I would like to fish. However because of the demands of both home and work and the time it takes to drive, it is a rare treat to be able to take advantage of these locations. When I do, it is a real treat. Of course one of the major draws is the native brook char (whom I have been obsessively chasing), but as I've discussed previously, this is not so easy to achieve. Yet there are other natives to be found, and these can be just as satisfying if you allow yourself to consider that they too are wild fishes, selectively feeding in a natural environment.
One of my favourites, perhaps because they are reminiscent of catching a brook trout, is the fallfish.
I caught this one above one evening on the way back to Boston. It is somewhere in northeastern Connecticut--the "Quiet Corner." You can see the legs of the fly popper it took hanging out of its mouth. I caught a few of them and because they are exuberant surface feeders it is a thrill to watch them strike the fly.
Below is another one (or perhaps one of the other dace/chubs) I caught in a delicious brook hiding in central Connecticut:
I caught it just yesterday (Monday) morning. It was a lovely day.
In another post I'll tell you about the bass I caught later in the evening in Massachusetts---too much fishing for one day haha!
Finding native brook trout is not easy. So far, I haven't been successful in CT. Not that I have found lots of streams. The trick is finding possible candidates, with public access, and somewhere to park.
On Saturday I went to one such place.
I never found the trout, but boyoboy did I find tiny bluegills! I think I broke my record for smallest fish caught on a fly.
At the end of the day I switched to #24 flies. Truly tiny. And the littlest fish became nearly the exclusive prey. As I waded up the brook, I'd feel the faintest of takes. Most I lost before landing. It is very hard to both feel a take and hook a fish on such small lures. I used 5x tippet. This was actually thick for this purpose but I basically can't handle smaller.
8 Black Crappie!
The rest mostly bluegill and probably some hybrids.
The photo of the Largemouth Bass was from the previous week. That was also a good day. 2 bass in one session--and a crappie--while all the lure and worm anglers caught only sunfish. I seem to be figuring out this pond fishing thing.
All of the fish I caught on the 11th were on flies with the exception of 4 crappie I caught in rapid succession on a green spinny wormy thing on a jighead--but fly cast on fly line.
Frankly I never, never, ever thought this would happen. I'm a stream fisherman. A trout fly fisherman. I like to be on the move. I like to hear the stream. Pond fishing is so boring. Just standing there.
Well, the strange thing about fishing fever is that it makes you go fishing under whatever conditions you have available. Because the drive to catch fish trumps all.
And so I find myself in the afternoons, after work when out at the company headquarters, fishing a pond. A mightily productive one. Even though the fishing pressure is heavy, I essentially never get skunked. I'm sure I did at first but I've figured it out.
It started with bluegills. And then more bluegills. I wrote about that in a previous entry. And that baby bass., shown at right.
But it just got better. Because I caught my first, second, third crappie. I think. There might be another one in there too. It feels that way but maybe not. Each has been caught on a streamer, unlike the bluegills that take tiny midges. Here's the first crappie:
And here's the next:
And then today, a beauty.
They really are neat fish and they put the bend into my smallest bamboo rod.
I'm going to be jumping around in my journal. That's just how it will go. Today I am writing about today, and yesterday, and a bit about last week. Some other entries are still in draft, for stuff that happened months ago. I'm going to write when I feel like it, not in perfect order.
As the persistent reader has probably already gathered, I am primarily a fly fisherman, and feel only competent in that discipline but I do try to use other methods as well, from time to time. I have a bit of resistance to going after trout in a stream with anything but flies and fly line though. It is an irrational emotional thing, and not to be overthought. That's for me to do. Perhaps it has to do with my history of fishing with my father and how special that was. Or maybe it has to do with watching opening day or Wissahickon fishing. You can read about this in a previous entry.
Some time ago I wrote about catching bluegill in the pond near my office. Well, that exercise continues to attract an inordinate amount of attention from me. I've been over to the pond two days in a row this week, and I think twice last week too. But something interesting has happened: the fish got "smart." They are there, but they just don't take the Royal Coachman any longer. Whereas before I literally could not keep them off my fly, now they are eschewing it for whatever natural forage they are finding.
I should mention that after the post I made in April about the advantages of fishing while talking on the phone, I started catching bluegill like crazy--a week later. Now it is late May and the fish habits have changed.
Yesterday, I had an ultralite spinning rod in the car, and my tackle bag with flies and some lures, and I didn't want to waste time getting back to my billet to fetch my fly rod, so I went straight to the lake. I came up with a slightly unorthodox method. Having previously (oh yeah, the day before? or last week? I actually can't remember) discovered that a wiggly worm thing on a hook just doesn't go very far, I tied on a small Luhr Jensen spoon, with the hook off---and a trailer, with a streamer fly:
Use the flickr link instead if you need to. Google is not working right.
Well, it worked! I caught a fish! After only 5 casts. (Well I spent 10 minutes in another location first....never mind that). Of course if you know fish, you'll instantly recognize the Black Crappie. I didn't at the time.
After that, I proceeded to spin-eptly lose my lure and my fly by breaking the line while casting. I really don't know how to use a spinning reel.
I went back tonight and brought my 9 foot salmon rod with 7 weight line. I needed distance. And tied on a different streamer--first a black/silver one, and a the end a black ghost (on which I lost a good opportunity--a real take but botched set). This was interesting because I had multiple hits. Over and over. And two really good takes that I failed to set the hook on. And a number of other botched attempts. When I tied on a rubber-legged fly with yellow legs, I got LOTS of attention. But the fish would swirl, then "punch" it, but would not put it in their mouths. But they hit it over and over!
I also brought the ultralight. This time I used a 1/32 ounce jighead and two #1 shots, and one of those white spinny-tailed worms, with a follower on which I tied the same type of streamer used on the fly rod. Now this got interesting, because one one particular cast (and only one) I had something really take my lure. It pulled hard enough that line was spooling off the drag--much bigger fight than anything of the panfish sort. But I did not "set" the hook hard enough--I lifted the tip, then I cranked and the drag screamed. After about 5 seconds, the load came off. I kind of think whatever it was had the white wormy thing in the mouth but the hook point never got him. Maybe it was a bass!
Finally, I slipped and fell in the lake while fly casting the black ghost 40 feet and that was pretty much it. Time to go wash my shoes. I suppose not filming with a gopro is good. I'd look like a clumsy fool.
