I got out on the water a good bit this year, more so than in recent years, which has been pretty exciting. I haven’t done a good job of documenting it here, but I’m working on that now. These trips don’t last as long as they used to, but I’ve gotten to fish a lot of new water and a variety of different types of water. The reason for the diversification was pretty simple; I wanted to target as many different species of fish as I could.

I found myself motivated to catch new species this year as I decided in the spring to participate in the Red Stick Fly Fishers Jambalaya Challenge, a contest our local fly fishing club started this year to see which member could catch the most species on the fly in the given timeframe. I figured I could catch 25-30 species and run away with the victory, but little did I know fellow Baton Rouge fly fisher and blogger, Chris Williams, had big plans to catch as many species as possible this year on the fly as well. Thus began a back and forth competition between Chris and myself that went on from March – November which put me fishing all over the Baton Rouge area and beyond looking to catch anything that swims.

On one of those trips I found myself in Zachary, checking out a BREC park there. The main fishing pond there had some stained water and the pond itself was pretty boring so, armed with my 1wt, I ducked off into the woods to check out the outlet creek.

With apologies to Johnny Cash, “I’ll fish anywhere man, I’ll fish anywhere…”

At this point I’ve committed to full blown microfishing, something I never thought I would do in my life, but a species is a species in a competition. I didn’t take pics of every tiny fish I caught, as many of them I’ve caught this year already. There were a variety of juvenile sunfish, mostly warmouth and green sunfish, and a couple topminnows, which from my research afterward were blackspotted topminnows.

I can only take so much microfishing so I left the ditch in the woods and headed to check out another smaller pond at the park. I found it loaded with submerged vegetation and much better clarity than the bigger pond, or the ditch for that matter. I began tossing my 3wt with a beadhead leech pattern in pockets and around grass edges and working it back slowly, but fast enough to not to get it caught up in the weeds. On one cast a fish exploded on my fly as soon as it hit the water. It was a nice largemouth for the 3wt and after a short fight and some tugging through the weeds I got him to the bank for a few pics.

I wasn’t expecting a largemouth of that size in this small pond, but I was happy to have found him there.

Fishing a bunch of different ditches and parks around town has been a lot of fun this year. They don’t all reward you like this one did, but it’s this kind of trip that makes the exploration worth it. It keeps me interested in continuing the pursuit, fishing anywhere and everywhere, wondering all along just what the heck lives in the water around us and how can I catch them.