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3. Those "green fish" - and a yellow one, and some orange & blue ones too!

On Tuesday afternoon, I took my introductory biology class on our ecology field trip to Clark's Marsh. Not as warm as I would have liked - we saw no snakes and didn't hear many frogs - but at least it became sunny later in the day. Passing the pond on the east side of the Marsh complex, we saw a LOT of fish moving around, both bass and sunfish. Well, yesterday I had no other commitments in life, so I did some "scientific sampling" as I told my class today (the technical term, I believe, is "point sampling"). Well, what better sampling device than the 3-weight? As you can see, I collected (and released, these are all contaminated with PFCs) some very nice specimens to show the class...throwing the perch back was almost painful! And in FIVE YEARS of fishing this is the very first perch I have ever caught in these waters, though others have told me about them. Damned old SAC base, almost everything I caught today was filletable in size...

Our rivers are HIGH, and there are few things less pleasant in life than filling your waders with water in the 40-45 F range. In the meantime, these fish are a most enjoyable distraction. Got my rod bent over hard time after time, probably caught around 50-60 or so in 3 1/2 hours of fishing time. Trout snobs be damned! This is waaaay too much fun NOT to have on a fly rod!

A few wildflowers are poking up now too and I saw my first garter snake of the year as well. Spring is here for real now!

Jonathon

P.S. All fish took a #10 all-black Woolly Bugger with bead-chain eyes.

P.P.S. I'm told there's some radioactive stuff (???) buried on the old base as well. Wondering if I should get a Geiger counter to check the fish???

Jonathon,

NICE fish, and at $ 7.00 a lb (around here, anyway) that would have been a $$ nice perch dinner for one...

Wurtsmith AFB? An old friend has the non-enviable job of tracing 'aquifer plumes' of JP-1, hydraulic fluid, and other toxins at decommissioned bases all over the Midwest; he was at Rickenbacker last time we talked. Nasty stuff.

closing, I really have to be more intentional about tying and fishing Buggers...a good-sized 'gill on my 4-wt is too much to miss!

Roguerat

'Less is more...'

Ludwig Mies Vande Rohe

Rogue, I have two other spots to fly fish (and more for ice fishing) for nice clean perch around here, thank goodness!! In fact, of all the places I have lived and fished in my life, I never caught as many perch as I have in the last five years (since I moved to Oscoda), and BIG ones too! I recently contributed 48 fillets to a fish fry, about half of the total. 100+ fillets disappeared in 20 minutes flat...

Woolies work for EVERYTHING! I've gotten a lot of brookies on them in one pond I fish, up to 12", and I've taken nice browns on the Rifle River with them. One of my faves is what I call the POG Bugger - Peacock (herl body), Olive (grizzly marabou dyed olive for the tail), and Grizzly (hackle, counter-wrapped with medium green wire). These days I tie most of them with large black bead-chain eyes, in size 10. Give that one a try!

Jonathon

POG Bugger, I'm headin' for the vise...!!

I've never fished still-water for trout; crazy to admit that, but just never happened (yet).

almost forgot this, a POG question- do you add weight? Wrap the shank with lead or anything?

Roguerat

'Less is more...'

Ludwig Mies Vande Rohe

Great pics, but I don't know about the spring thing, it sucks again here in Bancroft. Geez enough of the cold rain already. I spent a lot of time on cedar lake growing up, those B-52 were scary taking of over the lake, and the ground would shake when they were warming them up. Hope the weather is better early next week.
Mike.

Rogue, if you are not adding the bead-chain eyes, I wrap the underbody with non-toxic (lead substitute) wire. With the bead chain, it has enough weight, unless you want to get it down faster or farther, you could weight it with both. Experiment away! And I have one pond with brookies - essentially a giant man-made beaver pond fed by springs - and another lake stocked annually with rainbows (at 6-7" so by the time they're 12" they don't look stocked anymore!). Come up for a visit and bring a kayak or I can borrow one for you.

Mike, yeah it's been a cold, wet one, I'm not expecting great things on our local streams until waters go down and warm up a bit. Not only is wading scary (and I'm not getting any younger) experience tells me that when it's this cold they don't hit much, at least on the surface. Things warm up a bit in the next couple of weeks and the Hennies & Red Quills, and some caddis, should start to show up. Then things will be fun! I'm gonna try the pond on Saturday, it's not that well known so there shouldn't be too many others pounding it, another problem with this time of year...

Jonathon