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The creeks are calling

May 6, 2022
Adventure, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Outdoors, Scouting, Wade Fishing, Warmwater
4 Comments

It happens every year. When the azaleas start blooming the desire in me to fish a creek is at it’s strongest. The creeks are calling, beckoning me to wet my legs in the cool water, and tease some poppers around fallen timber in search of spotted bass and longear sunfish. This year that flame was fanned a bit more by my friend Brian, who had just recently taken a trip to Arkansas in search of smallmouth bass. His pictures were inspiring and as soon as I had a chance to hit a local creek I did.

It didn’t take long for me to catch my first spotted bass of the year, that happened right under the bridge where I accessed the creek, it fell for a little black Clouser minnow. I soon switched up to a popper-dropper so I could target the bass and the sunfish at once and eventually I coaxed a little largemouth from a lazy side channel with one of Ron Braud’s beautiful stippled poppers that I had won from last year’s Red Stick Flyfishers’s Jambalaya Challenge. That same lazy side channel then produced a couple beautiful longear.

There’s been recent research to suggest that the longear sunfish complex are comprised of more than just the two species that we currently recognize; Lepomis megalotis(longear sunfish) and Lepomis peltastes(northern sunfish). It’s been proposed that there are as many as six ancient lineages of longear sunfish (that includes northern sunfish). According to the paper, the longear we catch in the Amite River watershed, like the ones above, are suggested to be Lepomis solis.

The variability in the appearance of longear sunfish across their range has been pretty obvious to the discerning fisherman for quite some time, hell, there’s even a Facebook group dedicated to this observation: Lepomis Megalotis Morphology Project. When you see specimens from totally different watersheds side by side it’s easier to note the differences. The longears I’ve caught in Bayou Sara or Thompson Creek, which both drain into the Mississippi River, certainly look different than the ones we catch in the Amite, or any other northshore river, so this research doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Call me a splitter, but this research is very welcome, I’m definitely all for it.

I continued my way through the stream catching bluegill, shiner, more longear, and eventually another spotted bass. I swear I use to catch more spotted bass in these streams when I first started fishing them, but then again that was pretty much the only species I targeted. These days I’m trying to catch everything I see, which has me doing a lot of switching of flies from poppers to nymphs to streamers to size 26 micro-nymphs. It takes away from the time my fly is in the water, but I find it pretty rewarding to catch a wider variety of fish.

On my way back to the vehicle I found another lazy side channel that was loaded up with topminnow, some looked large enough to catch with a fly, so I re-rigged and spent some time dapping for them. It’s a little tougher to do it with a 6wt than a 1wt, but I got the job done and hooked one of the bigger ones. I made it back to the bridge and tied a popper back on to work the pools that formed behind the stacked up debris that clings to the pylons underneath seemingly every bridge around here I walk under. I don’t think there is a big budget for debris cleanup on our waterways, which is probably not the best thing for flooding, but it does increase the fish habitat within a river, so I’m not really complaining. Sure enough the best bass of the day was happy to explode on my black BoogleBug and I was as happy as a river clam when it happened.

The creek was calling and I’m glad I listened, it was a great day on the water, experiencing nature. No cool agate finds on this trip, but I was pretty happy with the diversity of fish that came to hand. I always tell myself that I shouldn’t wait so long before my next creek fishing trip, but then life always finds a way to interject. Hopefully this post will inspire someone out there, the way Brian’s pictures inspired me, to hit up a local creek and spend half a day on the water just taking it all in.

I’ll Fish Anywhere Man

December 17, 2021
Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Outdoors, Scouting, Sightfishing, Warmwater
1 Comment

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.

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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.