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Today we hit another pond that has been on my radar since I was a teenager. I was to busy trying to get into interesting situations to try and fish it back then. As an old man my main hobby is fishing so it's time to try it.
This pond is located on a wildlife refuge but there is no direct access to it. Back in the day you could ride a dirt bike to it or if you had a truck with 44" tires you could get back there. In this day and age everything is protected and no offroad traffic is allowed anywhere. This basically means that all access to this pond is gone and is now grown in and has been so for more than a decade.
Our transport of choice for this trip was my beater jeep. It's basically set up for offroad exclusively and has the basic premise that I don't really care what happens to it. This trip didn't need any real offroad requirements that warrant the jeep but the fact I don't care about scratching it up makes it a prime choice. I also needed to be able to spin it around in the width of a single lane gravel road along some train tracks.
We had to drive down about 4 miles of dirt road to get to a set of rail road tracks that border one side of the property. These tracks provided the closest access point to the pond. There are three ponds on this parcel and only one has direct access. I know google earth shows a dirt road around the area but it is far from a open road.
Once we got to a thin spot in weeds along the tracks we threw our yaks over our shoulders and crossed a creek and made our way down the "dirt road" in the google earth image.
This is the "dirt road" in the google earth image, yeah right.
Once we got to another thin spot in the weeds along the pond dike we drug the yaks up the trail side and slid them down into the pond.
When we hit the waters edge we were rewarded with a large 30 acre pond.
After we paddled around the pond we soon realized it held no fish and the water had a green tinge. There was some type of minnow all around but we didn't get a bite or spook any catchable type fish and we paddled the whole pond. This pond is off the beaten path and had tons of bird life. I saw two types of large crane I've never seen before and there were 4 swans swimming about as well as ducks. The aquatic life was a little disappointing as this pond was the hardest pond to get to that I have fished.
Being gluttons for punishment we knew according to google earth there was another smaller pond about 3/4 of a mile down the "dirt road" that looked better from the aerial view. We left the kayaks and went to see what it was about with just rods in hand since we were this close. I've never been so exhausted as during this walk in a long time. Having to force you foot forward in waist deep weeds for that distance had my hips aching.
We got this close according to google earth.
This was the view of the pond we were rewarded with.
This second pond is unfishable from shore and you can't even get within 100' of it and would probably take us 2hrs to get to with the kayaks and we would need to bring a machete with us. Needless to say we probably aren't going to go back to see what this pond is about. I was so exhausted I actually sat down for 5 minute for a breather in the weeds.
Back at the Jeep I was thankful for my cooler and ice cold water. I sat on the tracks for another 10 minute break before we loaded up and left. I guess all these "wild" ponds can't be great but you will never know if you don't try.
Good luck guys and hopefully you will also take a chance on some of these style ponds yourself. Google Earth is an awesome tool and I still have about 75 more locations pinned I need to check out. Hopefully I won't have a heart attack in the process.
This pond is located on a wildlife refuge but there is no direct access to it. Back in the day you could ride a dirt bike to it or if you had a truck with 44" tires you could get back there. In this day and age everything is protected and no offroad traffic is allowed anywhere. This basically means that all access to this pond is gone and is now grown in and has been so for more than a decade.
Our transport of choice for this trip was my beater jeep. It's basically set up for offroad exclusively and has the basic premise that I don't really care what happens to it. This trip didn't need any real offroad requirements that warrant the jeep but the fact I don't care about scratching it up makes it a prime choice. I also needed to be able to spin it around in the width of a single lane gravel road along some train tracks.
We had to drive down about 4 miles of dirt road to get to a set of rail road tracks that border one side of the property. These tracks provided the closest access point to the pond. There are three ponds on this parcel and only one has direct access. I know google earth shows a dirt road around the area but it is far from a open road.
Once we got to a thin spot in weeds along the tracks we threw our yaks over our shoulders and crossed a creek and made our way down the "dirt road" in the google earth image.
This is the "dirt road" in the google earth image, yeah right.
Once we got to another thin spot in the weeds along the pond dike we drug the yaks up the trail side and slid them down into the pond.
When we hit the waters edge we were rewarded with a large 30 acre pond.
After we paddled around the pond we soon realized it held no fish and the water had a green tinge. There was some type of minnow all around but we didn't get a bite or spook any catchable type fish and we paddled the whole pond. This pond is off the beaten path and had tons of bird life. I saw two types of large crane I've never seen before and there were 4 swans swimming about as well as ducks. The aquatic life was a little disappointing as this pond was the hardest pond to get to that I have fished.
Being gluttons for punishment we knew according to google earth there was another smaller pond about 3/4 of a mile down the "dirt road" that looked better from the aerial view. We left the kayaks and went to see what it was about with just rods in hand since we were this close. I've never been so exhausted as during this walk in a long time. Having to force you foot forward in waist deep weeds for that distance had my hips aching.
We got this close according to google earth.
This was the view of the pond we were rewarded with.
This second pond is unfishable from shore and you can't even get within 100' of it and would probably take us 2hrs to get to with the kayaks and we would need to bring a machete with us. Needless to say we probably aren't going to go back to see what this pond is about. I was so exhausted I actually sat down for 5 minute for a breather in the weeds.
Back at the Jeep I was thankful for my cooler and ice cold water. I sat on the tracks for another 10 minute break before we loaded up and left. I guess all these "wild" ponds can't be great but you will never know if you don't try.
Good luck guys and hopefully you will also take a chance on some of these style ponds yourself. Google Earth is an awesome tool and I still have about 75 more locations pinned I need to check out. Hopefully I won't have a heart attack in the process.
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