My First (and Second) Fish on the Fly!

Had my last final tonight, got finished early and decided I couldn't wait till Friday to try out the fly rod so I snuck out while the fiancée had her mom over.

I got down to Charter Oak North Lake and set up shop on one of the docks to get out away from all the stuff on the bank I would get caught up on.  Rhett suggested I try out a floating fly and twitch it back slowly so I pulled out my pack of flies and went to grab a floating fly when I realized, I have no idea what the hell a floating fly looks like...   So I just grabbed a brown one with some hair and a couple really small feathers from my pack and tied it on.

My first cast was very awkward and only managed to get the fly out about five feet from the dock.  The fly sunk.  My second cast was equally as awkward but I managed to get the fly out about fifteen feet.  I was super ecstatic about that, and then I remembered I was fishing and stripped in the slack and gave a few small twitches on my line.  One more little twitch and the line started moving!  I snapped the rod up and had my first fish on the fly hooked!

I fumbled with the line for a second because I had a few feet coiled up beneath the rod that didn't get cast. I remembered you can strip line in to bring in little fish so I tried and the line went right back out.  I stripped it again and held it with my rod hand while grabbing another handful of line to strip in.  I finally got him up to the dock and swung him up and over the rail:

A monster, I know.

So I got the fly loose from him, let him go and cleared the gunk off my line.  A third awkward cast produced a distance similar to the second.  I stripped in it in just twice this time before the line started moving!  I snapped up the rod again and had a little bit of a better fighter this time, but I was stripping in line like a pro now. :)  A few seconds later, fish number two was being lipped:

Another little guy but I was so excited to just be making casts into the water and actually catching fish that I could've cared less about the size.  I got him back in the water pretty quickly, ready to keep my streak up.

Thats when it all went downhill.  We had a storm roll in and the winds started picking up randomly.  About three casts later I got my tippet all knotted up to the point where I had to cut it and tie something else on.  So I tied on the only popper I have and gave it a few casts but it was increasingly difficult with the wind.  I decided to put up the fly rod and try to catch a couple more bass before I had to turn in.

I tried a rattling crankbait, buzzbait, and finally resorted to a 7" Powerworm over the next 45 minutes or so with no bites.  I booked it as soon as I saw lightning in the distance.  The storm is currently raging around our house.

So thats it, a very successful first outing with the fly rod, if I do say so myself.  I need to check out some youtube videos or read some books or something on how to cast, because I feel like a total d-bag flailing around so dramatically just to get a fly out 15 feet.  Any suggestions are very welcome.

I'm planning on going fishing again on Friday, weather permitting.  Hopefully I can post some pictures of a couple big bass and quite a few more fish on the fly.

Just caught the biggest bass of my life!

Got out of Speech class a little early and it was semi-light out after a quick storm so I decided to head down to a little local pond to try to catch a bass or two in the twenty minutes before it got totally dark.

It's a little walk from the car to the pond so I was kinda spooked a couple times walking through the trees in the mostly-dark.

Finally got down to the water, tossed in the 7" Powerworm that's been rigged up since last Friday.  got a couple knocks on it, missed the hookset, reeled in.  I pulled back to cast and smacked the worm/weight off my line on the dock behind me, scaring up something HUGE about ten yards away along the shore.
 
Swearing, I (very clumsily in the dark) tied on a $1 buzzbait from Walmart and whipped it out along the shoreline.  This was my first time fishing a buzzbait so I retrieved just like I've read to, started reeling right before it hit the water and steadily brought it over the surface.

I couldn't see my bait at this point so my second cast I can hear my bait on the surface, followed by a little splash and silence...  Immediately after I feel a pull on the line so I jerked up and had her.  This is the first time I had a fish really run hard so I let her run a little and reeled in as much as I could.  When I got her up to the shore I couldn't tell how big she was so I swung her up on shore.  She was pretty huge. (by my standards anyway!)  I don't have a measuring tape but she went from the end of my pinky to my elbow and felt like she weighed about 3-3.5lbs.  When I went to get the hook out, I shined my cell phone in her mouth and saw the tip of something's tail sticking out of her throat.  I tried to take a picture but my phone has no flash. :(  I managed to get a blob of my arm and a blob of the fish that I'll put on here.  Not very believable or exciting but at least its evidence... Sort of.

Thats what windows came up with when I hit auto-fix.  you can see my hand at the top holding her by the lip. Like I said, not very exciting but hopefully it lets everyone know I'm not just telling fish stories. :)

I thought about taking her home but it was about 9:20 and I have work in the morning so I didn't wanna stay way up to figure out how to clean her.  (Haven't cleaned a fish in about 10 years.)  I had her out of the water for about a minute at this point and didn't want to run all the way back to the car and streetlamps just to take a picture so I let her go.  I then picked up my rod and realized I didn't have my line run through the end eye on my pole the whole time!  Got pretty lucky I guess.  She messed up the buzzbait, bent it and ripped the skirt down to the bottom of the hook so I took it off, fixed the line, tied on a Rat L Trap lookalike and tossed that a few times with no bites.

I'll probably be going back there again Sunday so hopefully I can get her again and get a decent picture this time,  I'll cross my fingers.  :)

Lessons learned: Buy a cheap digital camera with a flash.  Buy a scale and tape measure so I don't just have a blobby picture as evidence!  Buy more cheap buzzbaits at Walmart!

Tight lines everybody!

First post! (About me)

I thought I'd start out the blog with a little background on my personal life and fishing experience to give some perspective as to where I'm coming from in future posts.
I currently live in the Peoria, IL, area and have access to a bunch of different ponds/lakes within a 30 minute/hour drive from home. I'm new to the area so I still have a few places to check out and see if they're worth frequenting. I'll put some thoughts on each place with a report after a trip.
Fishing runs in my family. My first fish was a rainbow trout caught on a Snoopy pole when I was two. My dad took me fishing throughout my childhood, mostly focusing on panfish and catfish. I think my dad was under the impression that you need a boat to be a successful bass fisherman. Whatever the reason was, we never really targeted bass when I was kid, so while I have a basic understanding of most things fishing, bass fishing is something fairly new to me.
For whatever reason, I got it in my head in my teenage years that fishing wasn't worth my time so I went through a few years basically without any fishing. After spending too many weekends watching TV and playing Xbox, I rediscovered Roland Martin and Bill Dance on Versus a couple months back so I grabbed a license and my old pole, headed to a local lake and have been bordering on obsession ever since.
As I've said a couple times already, I'm new to bass fishing, especially when using artificials, so I have alot to learn. I'll be posting some reviews as I see them for different lures and setups from the view of someone who hasn't seen and done it all already. Hopefully these will be helpful to anyone else just starting out and maybe bring back some memories for anyone who's been there before. I'm also starting a marriage and (down the line) a family so these reviews may be more budget oriented than some blogs I've seen, as I'm a poor college student and can't afford a $600 rod/reel combo or $10 crankbaits. :)
Please, if you have any questions for me, don't hesitate to ask. Also, any advice is very welcome, just leave a comment.

-Mark