FishnDave

Oh man! I hear you! Along with some friends, for YEARS I've been trying to track down where the creeks are that white bass spawn in during their spring run in central Iowa. We've NEVER found such a place. Based on one fairly reliable source, I think I know where one small spot might be...but I haven't tried it. Guys from Texas make it look easy.

Late to this post... but what about Elton John...."Hold me closer, Tony Danza" (instead of Tiny Dancer)?

The gov't says my retirement age is supposed to be 67. That seems much to far away at the moment. I'm probably gonna miss this fishing once I move to the St. Louis area next year.

Flyfished a local public pond on Sunday afternoon. Caught bluegills, crappies, and bass. Biggest bass was my longest of the year so far.... 21".

@siusaluki You were there just a few days before us. Looks like you caught more and bigger fish. Any flies / techniques work better for you than others? I still have a lot to learn!

NE Iowa

My buddy Jay and I spent 3 days in NE Iowa flyfishing trout streams this week. First, the stream conditions: NE Iowa has gotten a LOT of rain in the past 3 weeks, including one event that dumped 4.5" of rain in 2 hours. There were many road sections that got washed out. Some are still being repaired. The streams are still high, muddy, with fast current. Tough fishing condtions for sure. Weather conditions: Although central Iowa was pretty decent, NE Iowa averaged about 8 degrees cooler. I think it may have hit 48 degrees one day, which was the warmest of the 3 days. We had some light rain one afternoon. It was windy 2 of the 3 days, but fishing was do-able for the most part. Other factors: Brown trout are spawning at the moment. They typically spawn in shallow gravel stretches with quick current. Tough to fish, and very spooky. Saw some large trout, though! The first 2 days, we fished streams that contained ONLY naturally reproducing populations of brown trout and/or brook trout. No stocked fish. So, trout numbers were lower than the typical frequently-stocked streams. The last day we fished some streams that are stocked. We had not seen any other anglers on the non-stocked streams, but there were plenty of folks fishing every one of the stocked streams we went to. I didn't fish it very long, but I did catch one brown trout on the Micro Gamechanger....so that was pretty cool. As it turned out, most of the fish we caught on Day 1 were Brook Trout. I did manage to get the Trout Slam, though (Brown, Brook, and Rainbow). Most of the trout on Day 2 were Browns. Most of the trout on Day 3 were Rainbows. Anyway...on to the pictures! Jay caught this very colored-up awesome brookie: and this one was pretty colorful too: This was my Day 1 slam: Great trip! One tip...if you are in the area, stop and eat at Dave's Gus & Tonys restaurant in Waukon. Excellent food, great prices!

This Brown Trout ate the Micro Gamechanger too:

It does, right?

Nice fish! I bet that big trout that didn't hit really got your adrenaline pumping?

Tried out the Micro Gamechanger on Friday evening. It worked! Crappies liked it.I had a something very heavy on briefly...possibly a big bass, or just a snag. It was moving towards me, but it wasn't on long enough to know if it was something alive.And then the unthinkable occurred. I caught a White Bass on the Micro Gamechanger...from a pond! 13.25".

After you posted this, I tied up a couple (this was before you sent me your awesome jigheads). Fished one....the fish really DID love it. Thanks for sharing this, Jim!

Correct. Those are 3D eyes, not dumbell eyes. I haven't tried to swim one yet to see how it will work in the water. I assume Blane has done his research on this before releasing it to the public. Everything I used was from his recommendations...from the body material and spine configuration (1 micro tail spine, (4) 6mm spines, (1) 8mm spine) to the #8 or #6 Kona BGH hook and tail material. I agree with everyone's comments. Because the head is small (limited by the hook size and brush size used, plus keeping the fly proportional), the tail should be smaller diameter to make it swim. That's the theory. The head should(?) still be big and dense enough to make the rest of the fly swim. It seems like the tail also needs some weight so it will kick to the side when the fly stops.... this might be too light? I'm looking forward to field testing it to see if it swims good or not. If nothing else, it at least sorta looks like a minnow. ;o) Tied up another one last night. Thought it turned out just a bit better. The eyes on the first one were forward, as this was recommended to keep the eyes from falling off, because you can connect the adhesive between they eyes across the top and bottom of the hook by pushing the eyes to immediately behind the hook eye. On the second one below, I did move the eyes back slightly just for appearance. Used a #6 hook on this one....the first one was a #8.

I agree!

Shoot....the edit command wasn't working on the original post...so...I tried to copy the images here.

I've caught plenty of nice bass on the normal 3.5"-4" Blane Chocklett Gamechangers for the past 2-3 years. New "micro" spines have been developed, which allow even smaller Gamechangers to be created. I tied up my first one with these new spines last night. It comes in around 2" long, with 7 SEGMENTS! Its really hard to imagine that. They can be tied with more or fewer segments to get different overall lengths...but 7 segments seems to be the favored design by the pattern's creator, Blane Chocklett. To help visualize the size of these...its about the length of 3 dimes. In fact, the HEAD of this fly is maybe just smaller than a dime. https://s3.gifyu.com/images/BDC88B32-FA88-48CA-A1BB-511AE9FBDAC3.jpg[/img] Its also shorter and narrower than my index finger. https://s3.gifyu.com/images/6D96BA35-AB8C-4F22-8D72-F9EC52F50DE4.jpg[/img] At 2"...that puts this at about the size of a large fathead minnow from the bait shop! -

Flyfished a public pond in town Saturday evening. Caught bluegills, crappies, and bass. The bass was a beauty! 20.5". Flyfished Sunday afternoon. Fished 4 other public ponds. Caught bass, crappies, and bluegills again. Caught my PB Bluegill (10.5", on the left in the picture) at one pond, and a really nice 9.5" bluegill (on the right in the picture) at a 2nd pond. Jay fished the last 2 ponds with me, and took a picture of me with the biggest bluegill. Now here's the weird thing....I looked at the times when the big bass and the big bluegill pictures were taken. I took the first picture of the bass at 4:33pm on Saturday. Jay took my picture with the big bluegill at exactly 4:33pm on Sunday. WHAT????????

Moved this post to the North and East Regions fishing reports section.

Awesome trout (s), fellas! Don's work looks great! I follow this taxidermist on Instagram, he does great work as well: https://www.instagram.com/lawrencetaxidermy/

Nice fish!

Didn't catch many fish last night. A couple decent bluegills and a bass. Bass measured 17".

That is interesting. It would be really fun to fish those, if they don't see many anglers. To avoid getting pelted with golf balls, do you go at night or on rainy days? Or off-season only?

Good I.D. on the Logperch. I knew it was a darter of some kind, but I don't know the specific darters very well. They are very cool fish! Yes, we have Yellow Perch in Iowa...they are in lakes all the way down to practically the Iowa-Missouri line. Here's the purported range of Yellow Perch in the U.S.:

Flyfished yesterday. Visited 2 ponds. Pond #1: I didn't catch anything. Pond #2: Caught at least 15 bass (none over maybe 14"), lots of Bluegills, 1 Hybrid Sunfish, 3 Pumpkinseed Sunfish, and 3 Crappies.

I'm not sure what this means...are you asking if this is caught from a golf course pond? 😎 That would be a good guess, based on the mowed bluegrass in the background. Close! This fish was caught in a public pond at a city park.