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.