Fishing Report 6/18/2014, Part 2

The kids had some friends over after school and I was where I wanted to be with packing/cleaning/fixing, and I still had the Barclay 3wt still setup - so I decided to spend an hour at the lake to see what was around. While I did get a few hits, most of the fish were just following the flies - it was pretty hot (95 F), so I guess even the fish were lethargic. What weren't lethargic were the dragonflies. They were flying around, claiming territory and chasing each other. I didn't see any conjoined pairs, so they are still just marking territory in anticipation of 'other' things to come. So from shuck to pre-mating, it has been a week. I know they spend the majority of their life spans as nymphs underwater, but it seems to me the most dynamic part of their lives - where they would want to spend the majority of their time - is in fact the shortest of their different phases. Oh well - I hope they are enjoying all the flying around...

Fishing Report 6/12/2014

I went fishing for about an hour yesterday - the rain has been coming down and it has raised the water levels at Lake Newport considerably. The drainage culvert at the base of the dam had a lot of flow going through it (drains out to Lake Anne downstream/across the street - Baron Cameron). I brought out the Epic 480 and the Airflo DT4 again. I did manage to get one medium sized bluegill, but the rest of the takes were the small ones born last year. These little guys are the most aggressive takers also - lots of fun watching them try to out compete each other for a fly that looks like a chewed-up, beat-up, spit out bug. Good fun even though the session was a short one. On the return trip, I saw a bunch more of these dragonfly shucks - looks like it was an awesome party when these guys emerged!!!

Fishing Report 6/8/2014, Part 3

More random pictures from today's lake adventure: One of the snakes Marlon saw - A dragonfly nymph casing. This was not a small guy... I'd hate to have to live in the lake and be prey for this guy... As we were walking back, I saw a few bass swimming near the rocks and asked Marlon "do you think I could catch one from up here?". He said 'nope' so it was game on... I got one to take and walked back down the dam to let it go. If you didn't know, my superhero power is to be able to get fish to take my flies. This is different than Aquaman's power of telepathy with marine animals (and according to Dr Koothrappali from Big Bang Theory, "Aquaman sucks!!!!") Life is good...

Overcast Sunday Fishing at Lake Newport

We went fishing down at the Lake again. We saw a ton of turtles again (the kids caught them without the net this time - they are getting proficient). Marlon caught six bluegills using an orange scud we bought yesterday from Orvis. He and Noe chummed the water with hot dogs and were not hurting for candidates for the rest of the session. I used a really long #4 line on the Nissin Seiryu rod - I caught a few including this large mouth - it came screaming out of some cover to nail the pink sabiki I had tied on. We saw this dragonfly stuck on the water surface - Noe jumped to the rescue. On the way back we saw this moth on the garage of one of the houses - common wood nymph or buckeye variety. I'll post more pictures in a second...

Revenge!!! And the hatching dragonflies

Since that last crappie I landed a few weeks back, everyone that I've got to take a fly literally took it with them. I've been using 7X tippet to make sure if I snag a tree or a huge fish, my rod tip doesn't take the brunt of the remediation. That same tippet for whatever reason breaks after a couple of seconds wrestling with a regular sized crappie. Well, I found another set of crappie hanging around some structure next to the dam and I started pitching flies - and subsequently, one by one the crappie stared at them, mouthed them, got hooked and broke off - three flies!!! I ripped off the 7X and tied on a really small Meko Special-ish fly and I finally brought one to hand!!! GOT YA SUCKER!!! Marlon and I also saw a few dragonflies that just recently popped out of their larval cases - from the Life Aquatic to Life on the Wing. Time to shoot some dragonfly patterns....