Time Away From the Vise

This past Thursday I was able to escape the factory for a little bit and do some fishing.  We have been tying up a ton of flies and painting (what seems like) a never ending amount of popper bodies thanks to the post over at TFM (if you missed it click here).  It is all good though and we have been enjoying ourselves tremendously while doing it.

That being said, everyone needed a break Thursday.  The boy stated and I quote "I am starved for some attention and affection."  I needed a break from the vise and M needed a break from the prepping of popper bodies.  We decided to hit the local park for some fun.  With this park, everyone wins.  It is close to the house, the boy gets to play on the playground, M gets to read and relax and I get to fish.  This park, which I have written about before, has a small pond that holds bluegill, largemouth, carp, warmouth, and crappie.  It gets a lot of fishing pressure and it becomes choked with algae earlier and earlier each year.  That being said, it still is nice to go for a short outing and work the top water.

We got there and of course there were a ton of fishermen there already.  I worked my way over to one small corner of the pond and started throwing the chartreuse Panfish Persuader.  Almost immediately I was rewarded with a bluegill.  Nothing big but a fish nonetheless.  Over the course of the next two hours, I worked my way around the pond targeting cruising bluegills.  After they beat the snot out of my chartreuse Panfish Persuader, I switched to the tan/root beer one.  At some point, not really sure when, I realized that I lost it.  I was casting and looking for the fly only to realize that the fly was gone and I had been casting a fly-less tippet and leader.  So I tied on the green and yellow one and continued picking off gills.  Again, there wasn't anything of any size but damn was it fun and just what the doctor ordered.

I eventually switched to a Colorado Special in an effort to land a few crappie.  For those that don't know this fly, it is a bead head nymph with peacock herl, wire, orange marabou and a small amount of hackle.  I tied some of these flies up last year before going to Harman's hoping to fool some trout.  It actually worked quite well.  I know there are crappie in this pond.  At times they can be hard to find. Switching to the Colorado Special proved to be a decent idea as I managed to find a school of rather small, sad crappie.  But hey, a fish is a fish is a fish.  So I landed the first crappie of the year in this outing as well.  As stated before, nothing with any size but whatever.  In the end I landed 20 gills and 4 crappie for the two hours I was there.  Watching my boy play on the playground equipment and having already landed 2 dozen fish, I decided to call it a night and go play with him.  It had been a long time since I last went down a slide....

Here are the flies used with scars, teeth marks and battered courtesy of the fish:

Look: one eye gone and it is still deadly on the panfish!