Posted: Wed 01/27/10 9:08 am Post subject: Best Fish: Surprises of 2009!?
Okay...Now that there is the new "fish wish list" for 2010, I would like to take the time to share with you a few surprises from last year that weren't on my wish list from 2009. And maybe you guys have a few surprises from last year you would like to share too. I would love to read about it!!!
So here is my list.....
1 - Atlantic salmon - My frequent outings this past fall to a favorite small Western New york tributary proved to be amazing! Lots of big browns a steelhead, and plenty of Chinook salmon. But on one particular morning I was amazed when I hooked and landed not 1 but 2 Atlantic salmon from this small trib. They weren't huge fish by any standard, maybe 24" to 25". But they were there!!! And a week and a half later my friend landed a 25" or 26" inch male Atlantic. I have fished this small trib for a good part of 10 years and have never seen an Atlantic caught. There were always few reports out there, but no photos to back them up. A wonderful surprise for 2009!
2 - Smallmouth bass - Another great surprise to last year was catching lots of nice smallmouth bass on the fly rod. I have caught them before, but not like last year. And on sunny morning last May I was very happy to get a fat 3.5 lb. smallie on the fly rod that put up one heck of a great fight. Again...not a huge fish, but it is a personal best on the fly rod for me.
3 - And finally, the last of the best surprise fish of 2009 - Carp!!!! I have caught carp before on the fly, but again, not like last year. And on a nice warm, but wet spring morning last year, my 3 year old son and I had a blast catching two respectable fish on weighted crayfish patterns. The great thing about it was my 3 year old's expression when he was fighting the fish....priceless!!!
Bfly - Great post here too! Been some good and interesting threads here lately. Congrats on all three of those "surprises." I have one "surprise" in 2009 that I won't ever forget. We didn't catch the fish .. but here's the short version of the story. Me and a couple friends go out in tiny boat with fly rods looking for tuna in Block Island sound. No tuna to be seen, so I just cast a teaser plug on a spinning rod around for a while. We sometimes use teaser plugs (without hooks) to raise tuna, stripers etc.. to the surface. Then we cast flies when the fish get on the surface. Anyway, I cast the plug into the great wide open ocean .. just to break up the boredom and for something to take our minds of the lack of tuna we were hoping to see. A "needle in a haystack" would be good odds of this teaser bringing up any sort of fish at this point. Anyway, I cast it out there and I'm reeling it in with 1/2 effort and talking to my buddies at the same time. I feel a pull and look up at the teaser that I am reeling in (it floats) and I see a couple flashes. So, I yell "get a fly, get a fly" ... it all happens so fast that before ya know it the teaser and the fish are 5 feet from the boat. I knew that in order to keep the fish interested I had to keep the teaser moving. Anyway, it wasn't a couple tuna. It was a marlin! Right there 3 feet from the boat all lit up with his bill out of the water. I could have grabbed the fish, it was that close. By the time we got a fly to the fish it was too late and the fly was perhaps too small and we just simply didn't have time to even get a legit "shot" at the fish. But, it was an unbelievable surprise - and something I have never seen while fishing the inshore waters of the New England coast. Don't know that I ever will again either.
The biggest surprise was surely the brown trout I caught in one of the little streams I frequent near my home.
Those waters are stocked and when that happens they are equally fast cleared of any trout by the meat fisherman.
So any trout making it past the stocking size of 25 cm would be a real whodini.
This fall I fished the stream and knowing that all trout had gone I concentrated on fishing for shiners which are left in relative peace.
Somehow the shiner fishing did not work out since I could only find
a few fish willing to cooperate.
Then I tried to fish a stream to catch Perch or the Pike I had spottend in the stream. So I fished the streamer in one of the deeper sections of the stream but to no avail - no fish at all.
Before I left for home I made a last ditch effort to catch a fish.
I changed the floating leader for a fast sinking one and dragged the streamer through the water.
Suddenly the fly was stopped in its tracks and I felt something heavy at the end of the line.
I spotted a white belly and thought that it would surely be a pike and that my leader would be severed at any minute.
The real suprise was when I got the fish closer to the surface. besides the white I could spot a deep brown color. It turned out to be the largest brown trout I had ever caught and it was not in a fancy expensive fishery but right at my doorstep. I knew that there where a few leftover wisedup fish in the stream but I had never thought I would catch one.
Just like winning the lottery.
My surprises were some firsts for me. I caught my first pike, walleye, and sauger all on the fly.
Biggest and most memorable surprise was watching my son who was 8 at the time, catch a 18" largemouth bass out of a local farm pond. He was fishing for bluegill with a little foam panfish fly and this bass came out of no where and exploded on it. After several minutes of encouragement(by me) and nervous excitement(by him), he got it close enough that I could land it. I popped the hook out and he put the fish back in the water and laughed and gave me a high five as it swam away. On the short drive home, I do not know who was smiling more, him or me!
Posted: Sat 02/13/10 11:45 pm Post subject: 2009 surprises
love all the surprises
had a couple of good ones this year
1. How well a carp fights on a fly rod. while bottom crawling a nymph on the sebasticook river I hooked a large carp( 7or 8 pounds I would guess). the first run was a screamer , followed by deep water bull dogging. I was stunned when I finally got the fish close enough to wrestle with in the shallows. Trust me after that battle i will be targeting carp with a fly
2. how small a brook will hold brook trout. while fishing an old haunt this summer I found a small spring fed seep that runs in to the brook. To call it a small brook would be a mockery. the creek is so small its more like a leak in the hill side. 1cfs would be a stretch. ( ice cold though) I was stunned when I saw small dark object bolt under its bank( its undercut bank had about 3 inches of depth. I used a size 20 nymph with a busted off hook point and found out that the 100 yard long seep is full of what could best be described as micro brookies ( will be returning with a video camera to document this because everyone laughs when I tell the story )
3. a big old wise brown from the kennebec river that took an hour to figure out what he was taking ( caught bigger fish but this one was earned)
How shallow a big trout will hold if there is food to be had. I saw This 28" rainbow was feeding on a salmon carcass in less that a foot of water then got upstream of hi and swung a flesh fly in front of him and held on lol
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