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.

First Fly Rod Fish of 2012

It has taken me a while to put my 2012 fishing license to use.  April is normally the earliest I start fishing, and with this May-like weather we have had lately I couldn't resist any longer.  On Thursday, the temperature reached 70 with winds around 20 mph.  This left the reservoir I was at pretty choppy and the winds made fly casting impossible.  Out of 2 hours of fishing I ended up getting a tiny perch on the spinning rod.  Friday, I went to a nearby pond that I recently discovered.  I put on a generic dry fly and started catching lots of bluegill.  Occasionally I will go out to with the sole intention of catching panfish.  I, as well as everyone else, I'm sure, used to love catching them under a bobber, but I have acquired a new favorite way to target them and that is with surface flies.  There's not many things better than seeing a fish eat the fly, especially when it's on the surface.

First fly rod fish of 2012

Friday's pond fishing left me wanting more so I tied up some new dry flies and headed out the door for the same pond.  I caught more bluegill than I did on Friday and also landed a couple of shiners.  If you have never caught one, they put up a good fight for their size and they hit the fly with the intent on unraveling its every thread.  After only a dozen or so fish the dry fly became a wet fly and the fishing only got better. The fish of the day was a large bottom-hugging redear sunfish that was pushing a pound.

How the shiner got its name

Big Redear Sunfish

The guys cutting down trees Friday said they stock the pond with trout in the spring time for a kids fishing derby so I will be back to the pond after that for sure, or maybe I will show up during the derby and upstage some eight year old kids...  They tree guys  left a couple of lures that were lodged in the branches.  It just so happens that my favorite lures are the free ones!

A lot of the fish had black spot, a 3 host parasite that causes black specks throughout the fish.  It 

seemed as though the smaller fish had a heavier parasite burden.  I'm unsure if this is because the smaller fish eat more snails than the larger ones, or if it seemed like a heavier load relative to their size.  

The bigger fish should come out in the next few weeks!

Things like this:

Too many false casts
...ok, it was a 350º pan.

make it hard to do things like this:

Fish on!
...ok, it was a snagged rock.

But I did so anyway and got some of these:

Stocked trout, not on the fly

Green sunfish, on the fly

One of them I didn't get:

Wheres Waldo baby musky

 And some autumn type pictures:

Mothers and their fallen

Poplar Puddle

Lonely Lambsear

Reds and Browns

Open and Closed

Oh, and happy birthday to the best guy I know!

Mediocre Weekend

I had to go back to Binghamton this weekend to help assemble a garage with my family so I got out fairly early on Thursday to do some East Branch Perkiomen fishing.  I managed two smallmouth, a largemouth, and a bunch of panfish.  It felt good to be out again after a couple week hiatus from the long rod.  I tried a new foam beetle pattern that the panfish loved, but the larger fish were avoiding it.  Eventually, I switched to my trusty woolly bugger to pull in the bass. I had quite a few other decent hits but I managed to not land the fish.

Blooming Glenn Road covered bridge

Troll under the bridge

Big longear on the surface

Once I was home on Friday, I had some time so I hit up the Chenango River to see if I could get a few more smallies or even a walleye.  The spot I decided on required me to hike a few hundred feet through a stunning, 6 foot high, field of purple flowers. After arriving at the gravel pit and throwing a few casts out, I didn't like the clarity and moved down stream some.  This caused me to have to bush whack through some thick bamboo and driftwood.  Once making it out the other side I looked down and saw....

*Side story*  Two weeks ago Jackie and I were 1.5 miles upstream from the aforementioned location with her dog (aka my fishing partner).  We threw a toy in the river for him while this normally water loving dog refused to fetch it.  We watched the toy float slowly down stream while we could do nothing to retrieve it. *End of side story*

....THE SAME TOY WE LOST!!  While I was slightly excited to save 8 dollars, I was much more taken back that the toy beached itself in the spot, on the same side of the river, where I had happened to be meandering along two weeks later.  It must have been fate.  I cleaned it up and its as good as a moderately used dog toy that has been soaking in river water for two weeks... but it smells a little better.

Waiting for a ride home

Picture Perfect Purple

The must-have fish and rod picture

Swollen left leg

I managed to pull three better-than-stream sized smallies from the Chenango after forgoing the bugger and switching to a clouser minnow.  I may have a new favorite fly, but I'll need more field testing to be sure.  I guess that means another trip to the fly shop...

...of course I'll never get out again if this rain doesn't stop.