To Frog Or Not To Frog?

We met around midnight and drove to the place. It's a sort of canalised river that's used for irrigation of the rice paddies probably about 70 metres wide and miles long. Reed lined with the occasional bit of hard structure in the form of sluice gates and groynes, and moorings. There's not much in the way of weed growth in the water, which is a pity but not a big deal really with all the other cover and structure that's around. The only main downside is that there are a couple of boat rental shops with access, so it must get a lot of pressure at the weekend. Even on Monday, by the time we were finishing up, there were quite a few people out working shoreline with jigs and plastics. 

We got set up and launched by half 3 just as the light was coming. We both had froggy looking topwaters on as we'd been listening to the millions of frogs singing all night. And they are prolific and we were expecting to get a bit of action on them. However, as we were just getting ready to start a squad of bass started herding some baitfish against a wall between a couple of groynes. They steadfastly ignored our flies and by the time we'd switched to more baitfishy offerings the activity was over.. It's hard to retie quickly in half light when you're excited and don't want to turn the head-torch on!

Chuck went west and I went east with a view to fishing till about 9 and then stopping for brunch under a tree before packing up and heading home. I stuck with the baitfish for a while, but nothing was happening so decided to go back to the fat Dahlberg frog and work the shade line of the reeds.  Things were quiet for a while and I was starting to wonder if we were on to plums as the light was starting to really get up and I could feel the time running out. When I start having these negative thoughts, I'm always at risk of not fishing as well as I should and really need to force myself to focus, put the casts in and not simply become  mechanical in my approach.  Luckily for me, just as my head was threatening to go up my arse, I reached a nice bit of standing wood with an overhanging tree.  Even without much expectation of a fish, the difficult cast to tuck the Dahlberg as far back as possible under the branches and between the sticks was nice and engaging which focused me properly. I put it in, almost where I wanted, without hanging the fly or line on anything. Usually if I get hung up, the issue I have is the leader or line catching on a bit of stick I didn't see while focusing on the big obstacle. But the Dahlberg was sitting nice, and I straightened my line while I let the ripples fade. I gave it a short bloop and let it float up on a semi-slack line. Doing this with a round Dahlberg allows it to back up as it floats and keeps the fly in the zone much longer than you can with a long pointy one. Another twitch to just bend the legs and swoosh! It was sucked it under. I gave it a solid strip set, held tight and kicked my way back  to drag the fish away from the snags,  after a quick jumpy fight I lipped a nice little bass. After that I had another few casts in there, but nothing else turned up.

A few yards down the bank, an ambitious bluegill tried to eat my fly, so I cast the Dahlberg into open water behind me and picked up the 3 weight, caught a few gills on the popper dropper before picking up the 8 and moving on. This happened a few times and was relatively entertaining, but I was still hoping for another bass before it was time to call it a day.  Then a few minutes after releasing some bluegill and A bas started chasing one in the area I’d just fished.  I put the Dahlberg over it and gave it a long draw to push it sub surface and hooked up immediately. Unlike shad and mullet, bluegill can handily be imitated with a frog themed fly which was good for me and there was no doubt he wanted it as the hook was so far back, I had to get the forceps out to unhook it.  Shortly after I decided it was too bright and it was time to head back and see how Chuck was getting on. We had a bit of cloud cover so I put on a streamer and worked the bank on my way. I didn’t really expect much and really it was more to keep the long paddle back interesting. I found Chuck not far from the put-in just as he hooked up with a catfish. He’d not had any bass or bluegill but was running amok on cats and some silver fish called wadaka, that are a bit like roach.  After the topwater bite had died off, he started fishing a little unweighted leech pattern, casting it tight to structure and letting it sink before creeping and twitching it back out. Once he landed the fish, we called it a day. Not huge numbers of fish, but a nice start in a new area. We might head back this week ready with something more suitable for the shad herders, but it’s also looking pretty carpy or even smallmouthy recently so we’ll see.