I had free lunch time today and the weather was beautiful so I walked across the street to fish our neighborhood pond. I brought a motley set of flies that I grabbed on the way out the door. The box consisted of some saltwater flies that I thought might wake up the fish and a few standard attracter dry flies.
I also had a couple of wooley buggers with me so I tried a very small black one (probably a size 14) with a gold bead head. A couple of casts into a small channel between a small island in the middle of pond hooked something noticeably large. The fish tried to shake the fly for about 15 yards and then my line came flying out of the water. No fish, no bugger.
That got me going. I tied on a really bad combination wooley bugger I tied a while back with an olive body and brown maribou tail. Two casts later and bam… fish on. This one I got to see up close. It jumped out of the water at least 3 times on the 120 second fight. 2 minutes doesn’t sound long, but you have to understand that the fish was probably 10 to 15 feet from me the whole time. It was an unbelievable fighter. After the 2 minutes of trying to keep my fly from snapping off again and trying to keep the fish out of the brush, I landed it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to keep control of it and snap a picture. I could have stuck half my arm down it’s mouth. I’m guessing it was about 20 – 22 inches and maybe 5 lbs. I let it go knowing that since I didn’t take a picture, my wife wouldn’t believe me. Regardless, it was a hell of a fish and it was a lot of fun landing it.
On the way back home, I threw the same fly out again. On the last strip of the fly before pulling it out and calling it a day, I hooked another big something. It only took about 5 seconds for the fly to snap off this time. I really thought I tied it ok. I can only imagine the size of this one. I have to go out next week to catch some more bass. I was actually fun fishing for warm water fish.