Caught this guy yesterday in the neighborhood pond. I’ve never seen anything like it – a bass with scoliosis.
Brokeback bass
4 Comments
Freshwater
Colorado
Blake and I are headed to Denver in mid-September thanks to $198 round trip tickets on Southwest. We wanted to have one last hurrah before his baby arrives this winter, so this is going to be it. We are CLUELESS when it comes to fly fishing in Colorado, so this is also a call for help to fellow anglers out there on the internet that stumble upon this blog. I figure we’ve got a few months to study up and formulate a plan, but any help is appreciated, just email me or send me a facebook message if you want to keep anything private. I can pay you with Louisiana redfish knowledge if you wish.
Not sure where we are staying yet, I figure we can nail that down as we figure out where we’d like to fish. I’d love to find a cabin on some water. We’ll be looking to spend more time on the water though and less time in the car, so it may be on the Front Range, or westward on I-70. We would like to go with a guide for at least the first day we’re there to help shorten the learning curve that comes with fishing new water, and hopefully put us on some solid fish. Finally, we’d also like to catch a cutthroat trout; greenback, Colorado River, maybe even both, it doesn’t really matter though as I’ve caught neither.
We’re pretty excited though, it will be a good break for us flatlanders from Louisiana to just experience the Rockies, much less fish them.
Summertime
It is summertime and in between rain storms, watching LSU baseball get beat by a VERY good Stony Brook team, and catching up on UEFA Euro highlights, I have been squeezing in some fishing (both fly and spin) after work. The usual suspects are around, like bream….
bass….
and catfish….
But this gar made my week. I caught it in a ditch not far from the house. It is not the first gar I’ve ever caught on the fly, I’ve had some luck with poppers, but believe it or not, it is the first fish I’ve ever caught on a fly I tied. With inspiration from Kent Edmonds, it is a very simple nylon rope fly that doesn’t even contain a hook. I tried to get a self portrait of this monumental occasion, laugh with me through the picture progression:
I probably caught something else in that ditch too, E. coli perhaps, it is nasty, with an outfall right under the bridge, brownlining at it’s very core. The ditch produces at times though, last year it produced quite the variety of fish, upstream of where I was at. This spot has a ton of gar though, hopefully I can perfect the technique, the hook set is a bit different than I’m used to. I had 3 eats before I landed this one, I pulled the fly right out of their mouth each time. Need better water clarity too, it had just rained that day and it was tough to see the fish. Hoping for even better results next time out………..and no illnesses in the interim! Fingers crossed.
Mountains to Marsh 