Impromptu Midday Bass on the Fly

[BlackHogDown]

I had a good time mowing the yard this weekend.

Was weedeating around the pond when i accidentally hit a leopard frog. I'm no tree hugger but I'll admit i felt a little bad for the guy as i watched the two halves of his lifeless body floating into the water... I carried on my way until i heard the unmistakable sound of a bass blowing up behind me. The frog was gone. I continued on my way knocking down the ~18" tall grass when another frog leapt for the water, or attempted to. This time, the fish struck it within seconds and i've now got three bass FOLLOWING me, waiting to snatch up an easy meal. So now i've got my weedeater and I'm LOOKING for frogs to slice n dice to feed to the fish!

I could no longer stand it when i remembered i had a puck full of popping frogs...

I grabbed whichever rod was closest to being ready - a Sage 9wt 9' with old Fin-Nor - Most definitely too much rod but whatever. Tied the fly and headed back to the water. Cast after cast i removed fish of various sizes until i hooked the big one. Immediately snapped the brittle, old leader. Went in and grabbed a smaller rod, if nothing else to retrieve my $6 frog i had just fed the fish. Tied on the micro this time.

Proceeded to catch my record smallest followed by the day's largest. (Overpopulated, by the shape of her.)

Not a bad day of mowing.

[TXcazador91]

Nice

[HoustonHunter94]

Nice job! I would agree with you on the size of the larger one, might be time to take some out of that pond. I am no tree hugger either but ran over a baby bunny nest one time with the mower, I still feel bad about that. What a mess.

[BlackHogDown]

Nice job! I would agree with you on the size of the larger one, might be time to take some out of that pond. I am no tree hugger either but ran over a baby bunny nest one time with the mower, I still feel bad about that. What a mess.

I put her back but removed about half of the smaller fish. This pond is 4acres and about 50 years old. We've only got 2 years experience with it but can see it is definitely lacking vegetation around the edges/shallows. The middle is about 8ft deep with ~2' of grass at the bottom. My ignorant thought process is this ... Increase vegetation / fry habitat = more minnows. More minnows = more food for bigger fish.

When we got here, there were hundreds of bluegill around the pond. Now we can't find a one. So either the bass are outcompeting the BG or directly predating upon them. I think...

[EliteDriver]

Looks like a good day of yard work!!!

[HUNTNETIME]

Nice. I'll bet you can't remove enough bass from that pond. Time to start is now!

[HUNTNETIME]

Also...make sure there isn't some big ol' flatheads in that pond wiping out your forage fish population. Seen it once.

[BlackHogDown]

Also...make sure there isn't some big ol' flatheads in that pond wiping out your forage fish population. Seen it once.

nothing but bass and few BGs. The water is pretty clear and weve done a whole bunch of diving around exploring the deep grass in the middle. Been popped in the mask a few times from defensive mommas.

[dosrobles]

Nothing better than watching a fish eat a top water lure

[AndyMane]

Nice catch! I'm just learning to fly fish myself and I love it! The fish are showing signs (long and skinny) that could be caused by two issues. You mentioned that they may be over populated, totally agree. Another thing to consider is a lack of ambush cover. If bass don't have a place to hide and ambush prey they will spend their entire day swimming around looking for forage and then have to chase it down to eat. They are simply burning more than they can take in a day. I would recommend adding cover such as Christmas trees or PVC habitats. We have a 31 acre lake and this helped tremendously with fattening up our bass!

[BlackHogDown]

Nice catch! I'm just learning to fly fish myself and I love it! The fish are showing signs (long and skinny) that could be caused by two issues. You mentioned that they may be over populated, totally agree. Another thing to consider is a lack of ambush cover. If bass don't have a place to hide and ambush prey they will spend their entire day swimming around looking for forage and then have to chase it down to eat. They are simply burning more than they can take in a day. I would recommend adding cover such as Christmas trees or PVC habitats. We have a 31 acre lake and this helped tremendously with fattening up our bass!

We've built 8 so far. The water is pretty clear and shallow out til about 15ft from the edge. In this area, there's very little vegetation. But every downed branch or bunch of leaves in the shallows are holding minnows. feel like we're lacking some vegetation for them to hang in.

[hooligan]

nothing better than a top water eat on a fly, nice reel by the way!

[killerbee]

Looks like a blast!💥