Having my cake and eating it too!

If you cannot tell, I really love to fish.  I really love to fly fish.  Recently I discovered yet another way to find a little extra time to cast.

I've always known there was a park down over the hill behind my office.  The park is mostly wooded with a pretty nice walking trail.  It is well maintained.  And oh yea, there is a small pond in the park. 

I knew the pond was down there, but I never really thought much of it.  I figured the pond would get a lot of pressure due to being in the park. I came to find out that the park gets very little traffic and the pond gets almost no pressure.  I patient that always talks fly fishing with me mentioned the pond to me a few days ago and said he liked to take his fly rod down there, because the bluegill are pretty nice.

As you can imagine, that got me just a little intrigued.  And, as fate may have it...I just happened to have 2wt fly rod with the appropriate flies in my truck.  Not only that, but it just so happened that my lunch break was coming up and I had an hour and a half to check it out.

I rambled down the wooded hillside behind my office onto the path and back to the pond.  I timed it...4 minutes.  I immediately noticed some commotion along the shoreline under some trees.  There were numerous large bluegill swirling on their spawning beds.

I tried a popper and a couple of dry flies, but no one seemed interested.  That only leaves me with making them mad.  I tied on a #10 black woolly bugger and began casting across the nesting beds.  It did not take long and I brought several nice bluegills to hand.

I walked around the pond some more and found an area with some submerged timber and floating algae.  STRUCTURE!  I know what hides under structure waiting to ambush unsuspecting prey.  I made a few casts and BAM, and nice little 14 inch large mouth bass came to hand.  I caught a couple more of those and moved on.

I found another area with some overhanging tree limbs and some larger wakes in the water.  As I glanced down into the water a saw three circular spawning beds with nice large mouth bass in the middle of each.  One bass in particular was quite nice.  I would estimate she is in the four pound class.

I started dropping a minnow pattern right in the middle of the nests.  The big girl never did take.  The girl next to her did not like that minnow in her nest.  SMACK!  She was a nice fish.  She was about 15 inches and 2 1/2 lbs.

Well, in keeping with the theme of this site.  If you have water near your work place (or at your work place), consider throwing a cast or 2 during lunch some time.  You might be surprised!