Got an hour to kill? Enjoy this film shared by Joe Tomelleri of the native trout of Mexico. A description of the video reads “Truchas Mexicanas is a bi-national group that has been studying the trout of Mexico since 1997. As many as 12 species of native trout inhabit Mexico’s rugged and forbidding Sierra Madre. This is the saga of her trout, her native people and the struggle to save a dwindling resource.”
Last weekend I wanted to get Marin out of the house so I asked her if she wanted to go see what fish lived in the “creek” at the nearby park. That wasn’t reason enough for her to commit to going, but then I sweetened the pot and told her that we could play on the playground after we fished which got her to immediately put her shoes on and head toward the door.
The “creek” is a drainage ditch that runs through the park near our house. It’s not very long, I’m not even sure it has a name. You can jump across it and not get wet in some places, at bends it slows down and deepens enough to make a pool. Those pools will hold fish. On a hot, cloudy February day those fish were hungry. We caught several species of small sunfish, some on tiny nymphs, but more on dry flies. I brought a 1wt and had fun making bow and arrow casts to the pools and watching fish explode on the surface shortly after the fly landed. Marin had a blast holding the fish and releasing them back into the water.
Dollar sunfish (Lepomis marginatus)
Redspotted sunfish (Lepomis miniatus)
Green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)
Longear sunfish (Lepomis megalotis)
Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)
I was surprised at the diversity within this tiny trickle of a ditch, but really it shouldn’t come as a surprise as Louisiana is truly a melting pot for Lepomis species. This was borderline microfishing but it was actually pretty entertaining, especially with ultralight fly tackle. Marin loved it too, which is really all that matters.
I’ve wanted to make a shoal bass trip for a long time and this trip provided me the perfect opportunity to do so. Once we finished the redeye slam I knew we would probably need at least one more bass species to close out the Georgia bass slam and I knew exactly which species I wanted to target. Shoal bass are native to the Chattahoochee and Flint River basins, but have also been introduced in the Ocmulgee River. The Upper Chattahoochee was en route to the cabin from where we camped so that’s where we headed.
Where we chose to fish the river there weren’t a ton of shoals, but it had some and they were close to an access point, plus there was a tributary we could fish as well. We usually do better on smaller water so I figured this spot was our best shot at a shoal bass.
I was able to catch a couple of juvenile 8″ fish that I think were shoal bass below and above this riffle. Having never caught a shoal bass though I wasn’t 100% on the ID, I wanted to catch a no-doubter.
Lucky for me I got a hold of a no-doubter. As I floated the crawfish pattern through the tail end of a pool above the riffle and close to the shore I had a really good strike from a fish. After a solid strip set I was into a good fight. The fish made it easy on me and decided not to head downstream, instead heading further up into the pool. I was able to corral the fish and grab it’s bottom lip. Boom, shoal bass success!
It may have only been a 13.5″ fish, but I’ve been wanting to catch that fish for a long time. We kept fishing the rest of the shoals without any more luck so we hit the tributary stream.
It was good looking water, but not very productive, I didn’t catch anything else and Blake wasn’t able to land a shoal bass. Kind of a bummer that Blake wasn’t able to also get the Georgia bass slam, but we were looking forward to getting to the cabin and shifting our focus to trout. Next time we fish for shoal bass we’ll have to find a nice big shoal complex which will probably mean making a float to put ourselves in more habitat for longer.
Mountains to Marsh 