Back Yard Jewels

Almost within casting range of my back deck is a small tributary of an Ohio River tributary.  I usually pay it little attention because it's often filled with cattle, muddy, and I rarely catch anything but creek chubs.  I found myself last Saturday with about 90 minutes to kill and figured it was worth a shot if it was clean enough to fish.  The cattle were elsewhere, the water stained but not too awful, so I rigged the 1wt TFO and went over the bank.

I immediately caught a few chubs on a small yellow foam popper.  Then a few casts later, watched a decent sized bass (for this small trickle) blast the popper.  I fought the fish for a few seconds and had the popper come flying loose, the bass was gone.  I moved onto the next little pool and picked up a tiny green sunfish.  These things seem to be everywhere there is water in SE Ohio.

In some shallow water, I spotted the major hazard of this type of fishing...especially if you're wearing sandals.

After a while, I moved back upstream to the small pool where I lost the bass, and switched flies to a size 10 black buggerish/Goddess type fly.  I drifted the fly through the pool, deep, and got a strike.  It was, I believe, the same spotted bass I lost 45 minutes earlier.  I really don't think there are too many bass that size in this little creek, and two of them in the same small pool seems unlikely, to me.  It was a great little fight on the 1wt.

At the last stop, I put the popper back on and was rewarded with a small dose of my favorite fish in Ohio: the longear sunfish.  In my humble opinion, they rank right up there with brook trout on the beauty scale.  This little guy was colored nicely and was an excellent top-off for the short trip.