Eastern Shore Pond

[Mark]

I enjoy fishing Eastern Shore ponds. Yesterday, I visited Delaware to chase pickerel and bass. I had a good outing boating two dozen fish, (19 picks and 5 bass) most of which I caught on weedless paddletails. Ten came on the fly.

This is a typical end-of-day scene when you fish for pickerel:

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I picked these “dead” paddletails off of the deck of my kayak as I was packing up for the ride home. Is there any doubt that pickerel mostly attack their prey from behind? I had one “bite-through” on my 30-pound test mono leader which isn’t bad considering all the strikes I had yesterday. That particular paddletail disappeared completely.

Here’s why a weedless approach is good:

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The fish were holding in these pads. Sometimes I drew them out with casts to the edges. However, tossing a weedless lure directly into the salad or casting a fly into gaps, is a good approach. I use Bendbacks when casting flies into seams in the pads. They ride with the hook point up and are mostly weedless. I tried topwater flies at first – a popper and slider and had absolutely no success. I continued with a subsurface approach thereafter.

Here’s a decent paddletail bass:

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The majority of pickerel I caught were in the 14 to 16-inch range:

This one hit an articulated crystal bugger:

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This one, a Bendback:

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One of the advantages of fishing cool water ponds is that the water clarity improves greatly. I could see many of the strikes on the flies. The pickerel literally slash through the water like a missile to attack a fly. That always brings a rush of excitement for me.

The largest one I caught was this one at slightly over 22 inches:

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It hit a size 6 wooly bugger on floating line -- 6 wt. rod:

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That’s a respectable fish. But I would submit to you that it’s pure chance to catch a bigger fish. Here’s why. Minutes later, I caught this pickerel:

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Same rod. Same fly. Same area. Same accurate cast to structure. Same depth of water. Same manipulation of the fly.

Given the different result, which is not uncommon for me, and others I presume, I believe catching a large fish has more to do with luck than skill. I dropped that wooly bugger in front of a big one that just happened to be in the area and in an eating mood. To me, its presence and willingness to attack was as much chance as any angling talent beyond normal on my part.

Don’t misunderstand me. It takes skills to catch fish as we do. Knowing where to cast, or troll, is important. Selecting the right lure or fly and sending it to the proper depth and applying the right action is important. But catching a so called “big one” is more a function of the actual presence of the larger fish at that particular time than anything else. I did nothing different to catch the two pickerel pictured immediately above, but the results were different. So, while I’m pleased when I catch a larger fish, I also realize I did nothing extraordinary to prompt either event. That’s why I enjoy each fish I catch, large or small.

Finally. Kudos to the weather yesterday. It's not every year that I can wear shorts on the water locally on 22 October. That’s something to remember.

[Mark]

Round two...

I visited the same pond this past Thursday. My very first cast resulted in a pickerel. (A bad omen to catch a fish on your first cast.) And indeed, the bite was considerably less intense than my last visit. I wish I knew why. The air temperature was still above normal for the year and it was sunny. The wind was a little higher. The surface vegetation was less and what remained was decaying.

I caught 4 bass, 7 picks and 2 crappies, all on the fly except for 4 of the picks which I caught deep in the remaining vegetation on weedless paddletails. Nothing was large. The bass were each under 12 inches, the picks were under 18 inches. Only the crappies were respectable:

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Here's a little pickerel that hit an articulated crystal bugger:

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Again, emphasizing that chance plays a large role in our fishing success, I caught a more substantial 21.5 inch pickerel with the identical fly in a tidal creek off of the Patapsco yesterday:

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However, back to the pond, the fish seemed to be in transition. There was no definitive pattern. The pickerel and bass where not hanging on the edge of the vegetation as they were on my prior visit. Nor were my catches aggressive. Their hits were subtle. The pickerel bit the tail from only one paddletail. I had more action tight to shorelines but my catches were small in quantity and size. Again, that's the challenge of fishing any familiar location -- finding out what works on a particular day. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.

[DanMarino]

Dang! Nice going Mark! I need to get to one of those ponds some day to fly fish with you.

[Mark]

Thanks Tom.

I'd be happy for you to join me. Each of the ponds I visit has ample parking and a ramp.

Plus, at this time of year, the scenery is pretty and the fish are usually willing to bite.

Many times the only people on the water I see are those I went with. But most often, I see no one for acres and acres of water...

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And if I do, most are not fly fishing, which I believes gives fly anglers an advantage over fish fish wary of lures.