Lately I’ve found myself drawn more and more to out of the way backwater places that no one else pays much attention to, and less and less to the big world famous reservoir practically out the back door. I guess there just seem to be too many people, and I’d like to get away [...]
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Yeah, I know it’s pathetic to live in Alabama with our mild winters, and yet wait until late March before getting out for some fishing. What can I say? Someone has to earn a living around here. Last Friday I met my brother Jon for what turned out to be a cold, windy, damp [...]  Insane landed this nice bass early during the trip. I was standing thigh-deep in sticky mud and murky water, bent at the waist with my arms spread, hoping for a big carp to swim between them so that I could then clamp down on the beast and heave him into the canoe. That I was in that heron-like stance is indicative of the surreal, near-hallucinatory nature of slow, hot, and mostly boring exploratory fishing trips. The plan was for Insane and I to make the hour drive to my parents home to pick up the canoe I left there three years ago because I had no where to store it at my apartment. Once in possession of watercraft, we would stop at a Lake Guntersville backwater and look around for bass and bluegills willing to hit a fly. We tossed the canoe in, headed for a wind-sheltered rocky shoreline, and Insane immediately began hooking up on his popper. I was using a subsurface bluegill fly, but nothing seemed interested. After Insane lipped his third fish, a hefty two pound largemouth, I switched to a popper of my own. Predictably the fishing slowed. Neither of us could buy a decent strike. I knew about a gravel bar where bluegills usually bed on the other side of the creek, so we made the half mile paddle over there. There were some fish, but we managed to spook them when the wind blew us across the bed. By the way, I love a canoe for fishing creeks, small rivers and ponds, but I really hate trying to use one on open water in a big lake when the wind is blowing.  Another shot of Insane's bass. After that we paddled around, casting here and there to likely looking spots with luck ranging from bad to worse. By this point, I guess we were pretty bored. I get bored much more quickly out on lakes than I do on rivers. I don’t know why. All that open water and all of it seems devoid of fish, I guess. Plus it was 90 degrees (our first truly warm day of the year) and so windy that anything resembling boat control was impossible. And so I ended up chasing carp through the shallow water like some redneck fish grappler who had moved from catfish to more challenging quarry. The carp spawn this time of year. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but it’s quite a sight. The big fish roll and jump and fling themselves up against the shore and just generally cause one heck of a ruckus. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, doing this in the shallow coves where we were fishing. We decided to try for photos. Insane slowly paddled the canoe along the shore while I snapped lots of photos of the brutes thrashing around. We began to feel like photographers for the Wild Kingdom. “And here you see the spawning ritual of the North Alabama mud carp…”  Carp hurled themselves from the water all around us. The water positively churned with the fish. Many swam into the side of the canoe. We though about trying to catch them on the fly rods, but they had the water so muddy that they’d never have seen a fly. They weren’t interested in feeding anyway. A big one swam by, and I was able to touch it. Insane and I looked at each other, and we suddenly knew what the other was thinking. We said simultaneously, “I bet we could wrestle one of those beasts into the boat!” or something to that effect. Continue reading Wacky Fishing Trip – April 24, 2009 …or, We’re Lucky Dogs and You’re Not, but We Wouldn’t Gloat or Anything Like That.  We caught several chunky sunfish like this one from the ponds. The sunfish were unusually hefty and colorful. I didn’t know how or when, but I knew this blogging thing would eventually pay off. Pay day finally came last Friday when Insane and I were invited to fish a private pond. Actually, it was two private ponds. Eat your hearts out, covetous masses! I’m not telling the location for fear the landowner will be overrun with bluegill-hungry mobs. All I’m saying is they lie generally west of Huntsville. Our host contacted me by email* a few weeks ago. He mentioned he had a couple of 2.5 acre ponds that he’d love to have us fish, and the only cost to us would be answering some questions about how to improve his fly casting. I downheartedly informed the gentleman that Insane and I weren’t necessarily the place to look for casting instruction – serious understatement there. The mood brightened considerably when he said to come anyway. It was decided that I would bring my collection of bamboo rods for him to try out, and he would let me give his light-as-a-feather 2 wt rod a workout. Insane and I arrived at the farm around 8:30 (half an hour late due both to a serious misjudging of Huntsville/Decatur traffic and Insane’s dependence on caffeine). After introductions, our host loaded us onto an atv for a tour around the farm. We first circled the “Upper Pond” which was crystal clear and chock-full of bluegills gearing up for the spawn. We then circled the “Lower Pond” where the water was decidedly murkier. We were informed that it held “bigger bass.” I got twitchy. I tried not to, but the thought of big bass and bluegills just does it to me. I’m lucky I didn’t break a guide off my South Bend #47 in my rush to get rigged up. Our host and his wife left us to ourselves for a bit while they took care of some farm chores. We decided to start on the Upper Pond, the idea being that we’d save the big fish in the Lower Pond for later. You know, delayed gratification. Plus those delicious swarms of big bluegills we’d spotted were just too much to pass up. It didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. Perhaps it’s common among folks who fly fish for trout fairly often, but I for one tend toward the idea that bluegills and bass are “easy” fish. They’ll hit “pretty much any old thing,” and it doesn’t much matter how you present it. Well, sometimes that’s the case, and sometime’s it’s not. This was one of those “not” times. The rational (and smaller) side of my brain knows from my tournament fishing days that bass in particular are often anything but “easy,” and they can even get fairly selective about what kind or color of lure they want. But the irrational (and much larger) side of my brain leaps and barks and wags its tail like a hyperactive pug at the thought, nay knowledge, that it’s about to catch monstrous bass by the bucketload. Continue reading Private Pond Fishing |
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