3/29 - 3/30 "On the Hunt...White Bass / Wipers"

This past weekend I'd hoped to get away but an excessively long to-do list around the house kept me in town once again to my great dismay. I really wanted to get back out on some cold, moving water somewhere and try my hand with a few trout but it just wasn't in the cards. To help preserve what little sanity I had left after a hectic week at work I managed to get out on a couple of local lakes and ponds and chase some warm-water fish over the course of the weekend .

Thursday morning I threw some gear in the back of the truck and Joe and I took off for Clinton Lake just outside of Lawrence , Kansas to see if we couldn't hook up with some white bass or wipers. The timing was still a little early for any real heated action but with the recent onslaught of above average temperatures I thought it was worth a shot. Another beautiful Spring day around here that felt more like mid-June than the end of March , although for this year it seems to be the norm.

We spent several hours walking along the dam with me tossing clousers and various shad patterns to no avail , one little smallmouth was all I could interest in my offerings.

There were several other people fishing the rip-rap along the dam and a few of them were catching crappie pretty regularly on minnows under a bobber. While I wouldn't have minded catching a few slabs to make the morning a little more entertaining , my eight weight and box of larger sized streamer patterns just weren't the right tools for the task so I didn't even bother.

We enjoyed the beautiful morning and were off the water in time to hit our favorite sub shop in Lawrence on the way home , can't beat a good ole Yello Sub sammich.

With one strikeout already for the weekend I still needed a fix to take the edge off and thanks to an invitation from a new fishing buddy I had just the plan. I had recently been in contact with Troy , who introduced himself to me through my blog , and we had discussed getting out on the water together and chasing a few whites down at Lacygne Lake. To make the offer even more tempting Troy added the incentive of having found a very large pod of gar and landing a couple of them on the fly on a recent trip. That was all the coaxing I needed and after a phone call or two plans were made to meet up at the lake on Friday afternoon. After a quick introduction at the boat ramp we headed out to try our luck , myself and my two new fishing buddies , Troy and Lilly.

We spent a little time searching the area where he had spotted the gar the week before but it looked like they had moved on for one reason or another so we devised a plan "B". This lake is loaded with shad and Troy had been finding some active whites and wipers chasing baitfish in a couple areas so we put the rope flies away and started the search. It didn't take us long to find the telltale boils of feeding fish once we got in the right area.

The surface action was spotty, with small groups of fish or singles busting shad , but anyone who's ever chased surfacing white bass knows it doesn't take too many fish to make for some fast paced action. We spent the evening chasing surfacing fish and tossing poppers and crease flies.

It was an absolute blast!! If you havn't had the opportunity to watch a small school of whites chase your popper down and then proceed to knock it plum out of the water you're missing out. We weren't able to land anything very big in our evening of fishing but we ended up with a dozen or more fish apiece , all on surface flies.


Even Lilly was getting excited with all of the action going on in the boat , she just couldn't wait to lick that next fish!

We stayed on the lake until the action had all but stopped and the sun was disappearing over the Western horizon , nothing like watching the sun set over the lake to finish off the day.

A very successful day in my book , not only did I catch a few fish but I made two new friends as well , I'm already looking forward to hitting the water with Troy and Lilly in the near future. With the first half of my weekend in the books I began thinking about crossing a few of those
"To-Do's" off my list with the days remaining....of course I've been wanting to get back out and hit that farm pond again too , I hear the bass are on the move. That story will have to wait for another post I guess,
but I have this itching feeling that it won't be too long.

3/22/12 Middle Creek State Fishing Lake..."In Search of.....Well , Anything."

After 3 straight days of persistent rain around here it finally broke for a few hours yesterday on what just happened to be my day off. I could tell Joe was tired of being couped up and was anxious to get outside , it's amazing how much we think alike.

With a few hours to kill in the morning we decided to take off and go hit a small public fishing lake just South of home. I didn't expect to find much of anything except a soggy trail leading to an off-colored lake still on the rise from the recent deluge of rain. My intuition wasn't too far off base. No matter , the sun was trying to peek out from behind the thick clouds and Joe and I were both happy just to get out. We walked along the dam of the small lake , mostly because it was one of the only areas we could hike without slopping through six inches of mud.

This lakes inhabitants include saugeye , walleye , white bass and a few hybrids along with the usual mix of warmwater species for this area. I threw a chartreuse and white clouser haphazardly as we walked along , not really expecting to catch anything but still hoping I might get lucky and pull the ol blind squirrel trick. Despite my best efforts (well not really) the fish eluded us.


It was a nice little hike from one side of the lake to the other and we got to see a flock of wild turkeys strutting out in a field as well as several geese chasing each other around along the dam. A nice little nature walk if nothing else.
I still had one other spot that I wanted to give a look before we headed back North towards home , this particular lake has an overflow that I'd had some success fishing back in my pre-flyfishing days. The one issue with this spot is that the only parking is on the shoulder of a 4-lane highway and you have to climb a 60 inch barbwire security fence to get to it. I suppose you could say that I had to tresspass to fish it , but that seems like pretty harsh terminology to me . The water in the lake is public so it only seems right that it still belongs to the taxpayers on the other side as well , elementary thinking at it's finest. A short drive and we arrived at the spot.

Joe had to stay in the truck to his dismay ,I just didn't feel comfortable getting him out on a busy highway and besides that he could explain the situation to any highway patrol officer that happened to stop and check out my vehicle. This spot's really nothing more than a pothole and isn't even fisheable unless we've had a good amount of rain and the lake is topping the overflow level like it was on this day.

Still not much to look at , even when full , but I just had a feeling there was a fish or two in there somewhere. Still using the same clouser , I worked my way around the small pool , basically pitching my fly into likely looking current seams. On about the third cast I felt a tug that turned out to be a decent sized white.

At least the skunk was gone I thought to myself as I released the fish and made another short cast. I didn't linger too long , working my way around the small pool quickly, glancing back up towards the highway occasionally to make sure I didn't see any flashing red lights. It ended up being worth the effort , landing two chunky white bass and one dink crappie before calling it quits.

Definitely nothing to write home about but at least I didn't have to ride home with that skunk on my back...I'm easy I guess.