Acting like a human light pole at the edge of the farm pond just after sunset was not a bright idea.
To tie on the sharp red hand-tied popper from my friend Randy Billington under my headlamp I needed to pull my eyeglasses down my nose to look over the tops. My version of trifocals.
Normally that’s not an issue, but in this case the dozens of flies and moths circling my head took this move as an offering for a place to land. With a hook and lines in my hand, I shook my head to get the bugs away and the glasses slipped off my sweaty head to fall down into the mud.
While I said bad words, rinsed the glasses in pond water and probably added a fresh batch of scratches to the lenses with my shirttail, a beetle or a stout fly torpedoed into my ear canal like a woodpecker hitting its nest cavity. It kept going until its wings couldn’t flutter and its little legs wiggled until it plugged my ear so I couldn’t hear out of it.
Zzzzt, zzzt, scritch, scritch, the sound inside there, the sensation, it matched my growing irritation.
If readers are a little frustrated with where this column is going so far, just imagine where I was at that moment. So far the only thing going right with the evening was the relatively pleasant temperature compared to daytime fishing.
Fly-fishing at night is an endeavor that requires preparation. Next time I’ll tie on my first fly before I leave home, or at least in the headlights of my truck. It also helps to know where you’re going before you get there. I wouldn’t even think about it at an unknown location. It’s also wise to carry a pocketful of patience. But the rewards can be great.
“That’s been my experience,” fly-fishing guide Donovan Clary confirmed for me later over the phone. “It definitely will humble you, and you need to have a lot of patience. I don’t care how much experience you have, you’re going to have issues in the dark.”
And he agreed on the important parts, as well.
“At the same time, you will learn to have all your crap together and you’re going to learn to feel your line and you’ll get better at it,” he said. “You’re going to miss fish if you don’t have a tight line.”
He also agreed that bigger fish tend to hit at night.
“You get fewer bites but bigger bites. I believe that,” he said.
After failed attempts to clear my ear, I decided to ignore that bug, got the no-slip loop knot tied onto that popper, clicked off my headlamp and started fishing.
Two strips and a couple “plops” of that popper with my very first cast brought the whack of a surface strike. It was perfect, just for a couple seconds, just long enough for me to yell, “There he is!”
And then that popper whizzed past my good ear, my fly line wet-spaghetti slapped my face and piled everything piled up in the small willow and sedges beside and behind me.
Nearly 15 minutes into the evening and I had one cast with a swing-and-a-miss, a mess of tangled line in the weeds, an ear likely on its way to infection, and it was already time to turn on that headlamp again and bring that cloud of moths and flies back to my face.
But all I really cared about was that hit.
Whatever was on that line was a far cry from the dozens of sunfish and sub-10-inchers I’d pulled out of this same pond the past several early-morning visits.
While the start was a little rough, and I may have spoken rudely to a bullfrog bellowing nearby as I worked my twisted 8-pound-test monofilament leader around the sedges to retrieve that nifty rubber-legged red popper, the next two hours went much better.
As the full moon climbed above the trees to reflect on the pond’s surface, six decent bass came to hand and as many more gave me big, heart-stopping, whopping swing-and-miss strikes.
The biggest fish landed was only a hair over 15 inches, but the smallest was around 13. There are 20-plus-inch bass in that pond — I just didn’t find one that evening.
The biggest help, I found, was an almost-too-heavy U/V Beast flashlight I had ridiculously rigged to my cap and the top strap of my headlamp with gaffer’s tape and zip-ties. It was just a test-run, and I’m sure it looked goofy, but the U/V light apparently didn’t bother the fish and the power of that beam made my fly line and the red legs on that popper glow. That visual was a huge advantage.
The surreal scene and the quiet that preceded the largest catch of the night was a memory maker. My fly line shot out through a thin layer of gray moonlit fog like a yellow-green laser to rest atop the pond’s surface. Each strip of the line created a “plop” and silver ripples in the moonlight until that bass inhaled that popper with a hit that sounded like the slap of a beaver’s tail. It fought like a monster and even cleared the water’s surface with a healthy jump that failed to throw the fly securely hooked in the roof of its gaping mouth.
While tangled and humbled more than once, I still had a good night’s fishing and, with apologies to that bullfrog and the bug that eventually suffocated in my ear, I will be back for another nighttime visit.
Credit: Source link
