Ten Days of Fishing Challenge - COMPLETED

Last Wednesday I started the fishing challenge of attempting to fish for at least an hour per day for 10 days straight.  The only real rule was that I couldn't fish the same body of water two days in a row.  Some crazy part of me decided I would add an additional rule that I wouldn't fish the same body of water twice for those ten days (I sort of broke that rule) in order to make it even more of a challenge.  I did fish ten bodies of water (I counted ponds in close proximity as 1) in ten days.  One day I fished Pick Me Up pond for .75 hours in addition to fishing a different body of water for over an hour.  I later used PMU pond as my only source of fishing one day after work.  So technically I strayed from the rules, but since I didn't need to fish there to meet my quota for the challenge, I still consider it to be within the rules.  If it is that big of a deal to someone out there, then I failed. I'm sorry.

The toughest part of the challenge was squeezing in time to fish after a ten hour work day. I usually limited those trips to a little over an hour and hit up water in between work and my house.  Those days were usually my worst number wise as it was tough to get a feel for what the fish wanted.  Regardless, everyday be it one hour or eight hours fished, I still managed to bring at least one fish to hand.

I kept a series of numbers and notes each day I was out including lengths, species, lures used, etc.  I made a fancy chart but it doesn't translate to the blog nicely. I'll just list the highlights in a list instead.

Bodies of water fished: 10
Hours fished:  25.25
Fish caught:  36
Fish per hour:  1.43
Length of total fish caught:  416 inches or 34.6 feet
Feet of fish per hour:  1.37
Average length of fish caught: 11.5 inches
Longest continuous time fished:  7.5 hours
Species caught: 7 (Largemouth, smallmouth, pickerel, rockbass, green sunfish, hybrid longear sunfish,                          bullhead)
Most numerous species caught: Largemouth (25 fish)
Largest fish: 24" Pickerel (New personal best)

This also completed the challenge of catching a 20" or greater pickerel, so I crossed that off and put up catch a 25" or greater pick.  I always need something new to shoot for.

As much as I like fishing, it did get a little tiresome trying to fit fishing in everyday.  Had I not had to work or I was catching more fish, I wouldn't have minded as much.  I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Water Hazard Fishing

Lightning flashed over the ridge as my senko hit the water.  A storm was brewing only a mile away but lacked the energy, or motivation, to push itself over the top of the cliffs.  It was dancing its way east where it would find an opening formed by a river where it could continue south again.  I counted:  one.... two.... three.... four.... and set the hook on my twentieth-something fish as the thunder rolled over the ridge line, a trout stream, hundreds of misplaced golf balls and my head.  

Some intel told me of a series of seven small ponds in dense thickets and knee high grass; a result of a now defunct golf course.  Each pond consists of its' own mini-ecosystem and underwater terrain.  There are bowl  shaped ponds nearly devoid of structure, ponds the color of lime soup with high brick walls, ponds with duck weed dense enough to bounce a chip shot across, and the  ponds perfect for fishing, with a ring of weeds around its' edges and fallen trees protruding off rocky and sandy points.

I fished them all in hopes of a lurking lunker that could crush a stray golf ball in its' jaws.  After my fifth or so fish I realized that goal would probably not be obtained, but catching a whole bunch of 10-14 inch bass might be.  I tossed, and caught fish on, flukes, senkos, frogs, and crankbaits.  Fish after unsuspecting fish tore up my plastics and knocked the paint off my lures until my thumbs were raw.  In total, I caught 26 largemouth with 5 giant green sunfish and bluegill.  I am absolutely certain those panfish crushed whatever unofficial record I had of largest fish, of each species.  There may be some larger fish cruising under the weed mats, but I still had a great day.

This knocked off the challenge of catching my limit of bass from one body of water- which wasn't as grandiose as I was hoping- but added another challenge. To catch a bluegill greater than 10 inches.

Double Bass Thumb

A strange thing I noticed while fishing these ponds was that there were some green sunfish nesting.  It seemed as though they collected the lost golf balls and put them in the nest.  The first thing I thought was that they were acting like bower birds and collecting items to attract a mate, but in retrospect they were probably thinking the balls were big rocks to put in the nest.  Still interesting to see.

Here fishy, fishy, fishy.

Where have I been?  I have only had one real post since June.  A snap of the fingers and the months have flown by and we are almost at August.  My fishing hasn't been much since my last post, my fly fishing less than that, and my fly tying non-existent.  I have worked a little on the list.  This included a muskie following my lure and catching a few minnows in search of a wild trout.  Most of my fishing I have done has been at the local stream and pond.  There was an outing to the shore for some flounder- which I did catch- but the photos have eluded me.  All I've got is a picture of this guy.

Oyster toadfish AKA winner of the squishiest fish contest

There was also some time spent on the James River which only brought a few small smallmouth and fall fish to hand.  The water there was some of the clearest I have ever fished which affected my game I think.  I had many follows but most fish would turn away upon closer inspection.  Even my go to flies and lures were being shut down.  Jackie managed just as many fish as me after ignoring most of my advice (smart girl).  I am proud of her as she picked her lures, caught her fish and unhooked them all on her own.  There's still hope for her.

James River Smally

Toothache

The rest of the shots are pictures from some top water action today.  Most fish came on buzzbaits with a couple hitting a fluke.  It has been a long time since I have actively pursued Perkiomen Creek smallies.  My old fishing holes seem to have filled in and new ones opened in the last two years.  Next time I will be taking my fly rod for that 15+ incher that got away.  The largemouth came from Pickmeup Pond.  It seems as though the average size has bumped up two inches since April.  The trick was keeping the fish out of the weed mats on the bottom and the duckweed soup on top.  All fish didn't hesitate to slam a buzzbait through the slop.

Scoliosis

Maybe my next post will be of the dragon fly pattern I have bouncing around in my head... but probably not.

Black Lake, NY 2012: Part 2

Once we arrived on the island we unpacked and then wasted no time getting to the fishing.  I made the decision to go at this trip without worms or minnows which have always been staples on our past trips to the lake.  We both still wanted to have bait under the bobbers while we fished with lures so our first step was to catch bait.  We tried our normal techniques until I decided the fly rod would be a (slightly) more efficient method.  There were plenty of perch and bluegills caught for bait but the trick was only catching the small ones.  I think this is the only time in my life were I wanted to catch as small of a fish as possible.

Too big for bait...

That's better!  This fish was also Katie's first fish on the fly rod!

After bait was caught we threw lots of lures off the rocks of the island with no success.  The bobbers started to go down pretty regularly however and netted us a good amount of fish over the next three days.  As always with me, there were plenty of fish missed but eventually we started catching more than we were missing.

                            

                                        Full of bull

          

I love those bowfin.  If they hit lures or flies more readily I think I would have a different favorite fish.  They have a distinct prehistoric look to them and are made of only teeth and muscle.  I am planning to do a separate post about them later on for those who may have never caught or seen one before.

Even though we both tried, I was the only one who managed to catch any fish on lures.  The only lure that seemed to be working was a yellow and red Cabelas spoon.  You can see that spoon in the picture with the perch.  It seemed that the pike were moving out of the 4-8 feet deep bay in search of slightly deeper water which meant we needed to try and find them from our kayaks.  Unfortunately, the wind had other plans then we did and kayak fishing was pretty difficult. 

  

I did try a good amount of time to catch a pike on the fly rod and knock off another item from the challenge list.  But, I failed.  The only fish I managed while trying to obtain that goal was a hefty 17 inch bass.  I caught it on one of my deer hair Dahlberg divers with a rabbit strip tail.  Each one of those flies takes an hour for me to tie so I was glad it landed at least one fish.  I did have a few more hits on it and had a hard time straying to a different pattern after I landed this fish on the Dahlberg.

No fish of real size were cau- 

What's that? I forgot about one?  Oh, I guess that fish will have to wait till the next post.