I had not fished in a while, and it was killing me. Of course as usual, that's the weekend the forecast looks the worse. Tornadoes and thunderstorms lead to swollen rivers. Oh well, had to find a back-up plan. Saturday I headed over to check on a creek I had not fished since last June, and lucky for me, it was crystal clear. Didn't know how active warmwater fish are yet, because the water was definitely not warm.
Took me a while to get it dialed in, but I found a fly that worked and caught this:
I love this little creek. It's easy to access, and reminds me a lot of a trout stream.
It has all the classic riffle, run, pools. Unlike a trout stream, the pools are the most productive. I have a favorite, and it's a grab bag of fish species.
It has the most of the main species on this creek, red-breasted sunfish.
You'll catch a bluegill every now and then, some creek chubs, I've seen gar, several types of suckers and of course largemouth bass. The bass are extremely finicky here, you will see them everywhere, but they will not bite! :evil: I have caught 2 largemouth (on the same day) in the half a dozen trips to this creek. Doesn't mean people don't try. I found this in some debris in the middle of the creek.
Apparently a bank fisherman thinks huge largemouth live here. That freakin' spinnerbait was monstrous. The biggest bass I have seen or heard of caught here is 2lbs. The water in most places, at its deepest is a couple of feet. I just don't get it. It looked brand new, so the poor guy probably lost it on his first cast ending his hopes and dreams of catching that BIG one!
I kept fishing, and something slammed my fly. I thought, "This was it, I got a bass on!" Finally got the fish where I could see it, and I think (I need ID help) it was a nice shellcracker. It had a very faint red border to the flap on the gill plate. I don't know what else it would be, never caught one here before, but it doesn't surprise me. What isn't in this creek. There are also mussel shells EVERYWHERE. Weird that I only caught one though.
Well, it was weird until my next cast....
I wish I could have gotten into a bunch more, but the bite tapered off after that. It was a fun day, but I have to figure out how to make the largemouth eat! I guess I shouldn't have made that comment a while back about how boring largemouth bass fishing is.
Today (Sunday) some of the rivers had slowed down and cleared up a bit. Wanted to try out a crawfish pattern a buddy showed me me recently.
This creek was still very swollen, but somewhat clear. I basically had to fish from the bank, and there wasn't much of one that wasn't a pile of debris. Piles of debris = snakes, especially here. I made probably a hundred casts. I stripped fast, stripped slow, let the fly hang in the current, literally everything I could try.
Finally, I said for the last time, last cast. Cast out into some swift water and stripped slowly back into a pool. BAM! Fish on! After quite a few aerial acrobatics I got the first bronzeback since last July.
I thanked him for saving my day and sent him back.
After that one fish, I was content (and tired of casting), so I called it a day. When I got back to my car, I saw a familiar sight on my windshield..
Or at least I think it was a caddis, never seen one anywhere other than a trout stream.
Now if I could just fast forward to next Friday......
