FishnDave

Thank you very much!

Sounds perfect for flyfishing! 😁

I'm certainly interested....what's the back story? Ornamental pond? Koi breeder?

Nice! Its smart to be concerned. I attended a wedding at a facility adjacent to this pond about 15 years ago. The pond was pretty new at the time, and you could see hundreds of small goldfish in it back then. Its also right next to the City Library. Its possible the City intentionally stocked these goldfish, I don't know. I don't see any small goldfish (its a muddy pond, I only see fish that splash on the surface occasionally)...it may be they aren't able to spawn successfully here, either because of the other predators (small bass, crappies, bluegills, green sunfish, hybrid sunfish, catfish), cannibalism, or other factors. I'm not out to change this fishery, just enjoying it for what it is. There are plenty of other ponds around to catch other species...its kind of fun and interesting to have a pond with these large colorful fish in it. Now...if I could just catch some big KOI!

I've hit a local pond a couple times in the past week or so. I'd fished it once before a couple years ago, hoping to catch some of the big goldfish I'd heard live there. I didn't catch any goldfish then, just some small crappies and bluegills.I caught 2 Goldfish one day last week. The first measured 12.25", a new PB for me. (below are two pictures of each fish)The second measured 12 1/8".Yesterday evening I tried again. Along with the small bass, crappies and bluegills, I caught 2 more Goldfish.The first was 11.75":And the 2nd one was a bronze-colored behemoth of 13.25" ( a new PB) with impressive girth! Based on my measurements and calculations, this fish likely weighed in excess of 2.5 lbs!

Lotsa spots on this little channel cat from yesterday evening:

Getting our house ready for sale here in Iowa, in preparation for our move to StL in another month or so....hasn't left much time to go fishing. A friend gifted me some material to tie flies with. Its kind of like faux rabbit fur. I like it, so I tied a Gamechanger with it...about 3.5" long. I took it fishing for a bit. It swims really well, and doesn't sink very fast, so its a good fly for shallower water presentations. I managed to fool a bass with it: I also squeezed in a little time yesterday during my lunch hour. Hit a local public pond. It was cooler, windy, with some raindrops falling. I used a microjig under an indicator and caught a couple bluegills. Then I switched to a Howitzer Popper. Had a few missed strikes from what were probably smaller fish (panfish). I moved out of the wind a bit to a shallow area where algae is already starting to grow. Watched a wake zip towards the popper and caught my first topwater bass of the season. Fished back towards where my car was parked. Made one last cast before heading back home. A nicer bass hit the popper. 18".

That's great!

Giant buffalo! Beautiful fish! Good job getting that one in the boat! 😲

Beautiful bass, exciting for sure! Happy Birthday!

You may have something there. A friend of mine has experienced very similar results with Vanish: too many break-offs on the lines under 12lb test. Seems less expensive than some other fluoro tippet options, and we get what we pay for. I fish a lot of poppers for bass, and it may be that the fluoro isn't the best with repeated hard jerks of working the popper. But I do like its other features. No single line is perfect for all applications, I suppose. Also, the rods may factor in as well. I like fast action rods, and they don't protect tippet as well as a medium fast rod, for example. Maybe I should try Seaguar?

Fished for about 1.5 hours before dark yesterday evening. Fishing was very very slow. Caught 4 bluegills, 3 crappies, and a tiny bass. The highlight of the evening was catching my biggest fly rod crappie ever, and my biggest Iowa crappie....this 15" White Crappie:

My buddy Jay's 14" White Crappie:

Stopped by a local public pond for 90 minutes on my way home from work yesterday evening. Flyfished the downwind end of the pond. Found crappies, bluegills and bass.