Friday, May 4, 2012

The Best Fishing

This morning I checked out a location that was given by a friend.   The water was like most around this area.  There are many small bodies of water that are on the fence between lakes and ponds.  They usually have the same species of fish.  A higher end neighborhood was near the lake and I expected to see a no fishing or a residents only sign.   Luckily there was no sign and I could see small brim fleeing from the banks as I walked closer.  The sun was just coming up and the reflection of the trees were broken by carp fins.   I made my way around looking for panfish and bass beds.  There was a place where a creek fed in and a grass carp was mudding.  I had a popper on and decided to give it a try.  There's no way to properly explain the excitement of a big fish going towards a popper.  The time between the fish started moving towards the fly and it actually eating it I was in disbelief.  I only believed the fish actually ate the popper when I stripped to set the hook and saw an explosion of water and fins.  Grass carp fight very strange.   I have only caught two but both behaved the exact same way.   They would fight for a few seconds then let you bring them close to shore.  Once you had them close enough to almost touch they turn around and sprint for deeper water.   These sprints show their power and they happen over and over.  After about 7 rounds of this scenario I was able to land the fish.  I couldn't get that great of a picture because of the lighting and my crappy camera.
When the fish took off it doused my legs with water soaking my feet. Last May was the last time I caught a grass carp and strangely enough it was also on a popper.

Later I headed to a familiar pond that usually has monster gills. The action was slow in the beginning. I ended up trying something I'm not fond of but works. Panfish often succumb to peer pressure. If they see other fish chasing something they follow along. I dropped my popper size down to get the smaller to medium size fishes attention. Then sure enough the bigger fish started to investigate. The monsters seemed to be located in a small 6foot radius. They hit hard and almost swallowed the fly ever single time. I'm not sure why these gills get so big and I don't really care as long as I can catch them.
Even with a 5wt these fish can put a nice bend in the rod. In between catches I had a grass carp rise for the popper and refuse the fly. I'm starting to wonder which carp are more aggressive, commons or grassies. May is usually my favorite month to fish. This type of start is only making me believe that more.

8 comments:

  1. Sweet on both accounts! Bluegill are so fun....but so are carp for that matter.

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  2. Nice! Grass carp are far more surface oriented, in my experince here, than commons. I think though that commons are as you term it the more agressive fish, though as McTage says of grassies, "they can go predator." Nice bluegill you had, love those fish.

    Gregg

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  3. Kevin
    Outstanding bluegills on the fly, and that crap isn't bad either. If you really want a tussle try the 3 or 4 wt. with the gills. Nice Post

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  4. SOme nice loooking fish man. Those gills are just awesome. Wish I had a place to chase monster gills around my place :) Thanks for sharing. Tight Line.s

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  5. Thanks for the comments folks.

    Gregg, I thought about bringing my 3wt. I'm not sure what would happen if a carp hit it. Probably take 10min to land.

    Trout, it's hard to find places that have the really big ones. They are few and far between. I had a nice bass on today too. One of the biggest I have ever hooked with a fly rod. I think it was bedding but I'm not sure.

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  6. Two carp. Both on top on popperss. Pretty cool man. A friend has intel on a pond with a bunch of small (two footers) super aggressive grassies that charge as soon as anything hits the water. Maybe I should get some poppers to try there.

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  7. Trevor, if they are that aggressive you definitely shoud.

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  8. Grassies on poppers is sweet! I'll have to give that more time on my locals. I've had them rise for grass hopper patterns but they haven't gobbled them up. They sort of sip at them and I've never hooked up with a topwater pattern. So new goal is catch grassie on topwater fly.

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