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The creeks are calling

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

Florida Panhandle River Trip – Day 1

December 22, 2021
Adventure, Camping, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Kayak Fishing, Kayaking, Outdoors, Scouting, Travel, Warmwater
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I had a weekend in November set aside to fish and I wanted to continue targeting different species. It was getting increasingly difficult to target different species in the watersheds close to me(for a variety of reasons) so I was looking to venture out and do a solo overnight trip. I wasn’t interested in fishing the saltwater, even though that could have been a boon for new species, and it was getting late in the season for freshwater, so I figured a trip to some spring fed rivers in the Florida panhandle fit the bill. It had been a while since I fished over there and I really enjoyed the one river trip I made so it was time to head back.

I made the drive east on I-10 after work one night and set up camp in the dark. I woke up to an empty campground and the creek I wanted to fish within walking distance – can’t beat that!

I paddled downstream hoping to check out a large spring run, but was stopped by a giant laydown blocking passage downstream. I didn’t care to portage through the swamp around it so I headed back upstream a ways and began chucking my trusty popper/dropper rig around all the timber in the water. The dropper nymph I had on was quickly attacked by the local shiners.

This was a new species for me, a weed shiner, so I wasn’t made at him. Eventually I started catching sunfish too.

The swampy scenery found along this creek gave it a Louisiana feel, but given that the water actually had a decent flow to it, there was no mistaking I was somewhere else. In my mind this was old Florida, a place overlooked by tourists who were quick to pass it up on their drive to the beach. They’re missing out, but let’s not shout that out to the rooftops.

Next fish to the boat was a redbreast sunfish. A sunfish species I am familiar with from my time in northern Alabama, but one I had not caught in a while – add it to the list. This one was not as colored up as others I’ve come across, it may not be the right time of year for that.

After the redbreast I landed another new sunfish species for the year, the spotted sunfish. I’ve caught lots of their cousins, the redspotted sunfish, but this was the first spotted sunfish for me this year. These little stumpknockers are subtly beautiful with red tinged dorsal fins, brilliant blue halos under their eye, and a purple iridescent sheen on their flanks. It’s safe to say the old adage holds true that pictures don’t do them justice.

The sunfish bite wasn’t fast and furious, but it was frequent enough to keep me entertained. I knew Choctaw bass and chain pickerel could also be found in this creek, but they were eluding me on this morning. I picked up at lunch, fixed a bite to eat, and decided to explore a different stretch downstream.

After chatting with a nice lady who worked for the Northwest Florida Water Management District(the folks that managed some of the launches on this creek and the campground I was staying at) at the next put-in, I hit the water and again headed upstream. Being solo on a river with current, it just makes sense to paddle up and fish back down, so that was my strategy throughout my trip. Soon after starting my paddle the skies opened up and of course I had left my rain jacket back in the truck. I did my best to hide under the trees for the hard stuff, but man that rain was cold! When I made it to an area with heavy aquatic vegetation that’s where I began targeting the resident chain pickerel.

I was stripping a big articulated streamer around the big mounds of salad in the slow bends of the creek and before long I had a massive eat from what was probably the biggest chain pickerel I’ve ever seen! This thing absolutely nailed my fly – it was incredible! After a short fight, that had me trying to maintain pressure while the fish ran through the weeds, it then leapt out of the water and crashed back down. Shortly after that jump my line went limp and I realized I made a serious error in my tackle set up. I thought I didn’t need to switch to a wire leader for the little ‘ol pickerel I was targeting and that decision cost me dearly. My line had been cut and I lost one of my favorite articulated streamers that Blake had tied. It was one that has fooled several big trout at the cabin, so it was almost just as heartbreaking to lose that fly as it was to lose that fish. Oh well, lesson learned, I had to re-rig.

I pressed onto a different stand of vegetation and now, armed with a wire leader, threw a much less appealing fly into the water and began stripping it back. Luckily the pickerel didn’t mind and soon enough I was rewarded with another eat, this fish though didn’t hold a candle to the previous one. Still it was a 20″ fish and netted me another fly caught species on the year.

I tried to take a picture of the plant I was fishing around and the place where I found the pickerel, but with the rain it did not come out that great at all. I’ve got some pictures of it from my last trip out this way in 2016 that I posted a link to earlier. If anyone knows what it is please let me know. I’ve tried doing a bit of research, but I’ve yet to figure it out. Whatever it is, the pickerel love it, and so I love it.

After a bit more rain I was soaked and decided to just paddle down the creek through the fog. It was cold and beautiful. It actually felt like Fall here in north Florida with the color in the cypress trees. I didn’t come across any bass as I had in my previous trip to this creek, but I did have a pretty good day on the water, despite the rain, and accomplished my goal of landing a few more species on the fly.

Roadside Scouting Success

December 13, 2021
Adventure, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Outdoors, Scouting, Warmwater
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Just before things got serious with Hurricane Ida I was able to squeeze in a last minute scouting trip to a few roadside spots north of Lake Pontchartrain. This trip was supposed to be a wade fishing trip to one of my favorite streams with a brief roadside stop on the way to try and catch a new species to me, but the weather that day made me call an audible.

I pulled up at my first stop as the skies opened up and began casting my fly into a hole where a tannic stream poured out of a set of culverts that ran under the highway. I worked the hot head damsel fly from one side of the hole to the other and I tried to work it from the top down because in some spots the deeper I let it drop the easier it was to get hung up. Here’s what I found:

Goggle-eye (Warmouth)
Grass pickerel – the target species
Bluegill
Juvenile goggle-eye
Flier

The grass pickerel was the species I was after so I was pretty pumped to catch one at the first stop. The flier was a surprise bonus catch and as an unabashed sunfish nerd I was thrilled to land it as well. I knew they existed in South Louisiana somewhere, but I really had no idea where I needed to go to target them because I never hear anything from other anglers about them. In the Freshwater Fishes of Louisiana book by Dr. Neil H. Douglas, their range map says they exist statewide, but that to me is extremely vague and unhelpful. I may be asking too much of a nearly 50 year old book. I ended up catching three flier which tells me that they are at least established at this spot and should be a clue as to what type of habitat I should have been looking for them in all along.

I ended up fishing here longer than I thought I would because I was catching fish in the rain and frankly that’s better than not catching fish in the rain. All good things come to an end though and when things shut down I moved on to spot two. Spot two came on the recommendation of Chris Williams as the place I needed to go to target the grass pickerel and my whole reason for making a side trip here in the first place. He had added them to his species list for the RSFF Jambalaya Challenge and never having seen one before I was curious about them, so he passed on the knowledge to me. For that I’m very appreciative – anglers helping anglers, got to love it.

This spot was very similar to the first as it was a deep spot in a tributary, right off the highway. I worked it similarly and soon was rewarded with fish.

Dollar sunfish

Another mixed bag, no flier this time, but a few more grass pickerel, with the last one being pretty respectable, trending toward the max of their length. You got to watch those pickerel as they do have teeth and if they hit a fly up toward the line you may not get that fly back. I lost a couple flies to teeth while targeting them on this trip. They hit a fly like any Esox, they T-bone it, and I had a little trouble securing the hook up early on with them. I caught enough of them though that I wasn’t kicking myself over it.

After getting my fill of pickerel I picked up and moved on down the road. The rain wasn’t letting up and I spent a little too much time at each of these first two stops to go wade fish a stream now, especially one that may or may not get blown out with all the rain, so I opted to keep on spot hopping and scout a few more different roadside spots in the area.

The rain had made the day’s fishing tougher than it had to be and by the time I was ready to drive home I was sufficiently soaked. I caught a few fish here and there, no more new species to report, but found some good looking water. No spot was as productive as the first two. Also the more time I spent listening to the radio in the truck between spots the bleaker the forecast looked with Hurricane Ida. The track continued to jog westward toward Baton Rouge so I eventually decided I needed to head home. We needed to make a family decision as to what our plan was in regards to riding out the storm.

I’ll have more on that in another post, but know that our household and family made it through Hurricane Ida just fine. We were very lucky as there were many people in south Louisiana that were impacted and continue to be impacted by that storm to this day. It was a monster and one of those life changing events for some folks.