Sunday, May 20, 2012

Dads And Daughters On The Pond

Last night we had some very good friends over for dinner and the plan all along was that Scott and I were going to sneak off to the pond for a couple hours of fishing before dark while the children played together.  Well...our daughters would have none of it and before I had even loaded the kayaks in the back of the Element, they were both crawling in already wearing their swimming suits.  Our quiet evening fishing on the pond had just changed gears.


Once out on the pond the girls had no intention on fishing.  They wanted to swim and for the next hour they played and loudly kicked in the water, did cannonballs off of the Versa Board, chased each other between the two kayaks, and had a very silly time together.  They were completely oblivious that their dads had a different idea for the night and blissfully played the evening away.


Clearly we were not going to go bass fishing and so while the girls swam, Scott rigged up a cricket under a cork on his ultralight outfit and began catching bluegill after bluegill, sometimes not twenty feet away from where the girls were splashing and swimming.  I figured why let Scott have all the fun and put together Hadley's custom Lamiglas Spin/Fly outfit and put a cricket on a hook as well.  Moments later I was onto my first of many bluegills.  This was a lot of fun.


Truth told I've never been able to crack the code with the bluegills in the family pond on flies.  I've caught one here and one there on small poppers or nymphs but found out last night all they have ever wanted was crickets and crickets we did give them.

A couple times one of the crickets was able to escape from the cricket keeper and dropped into the water only to be engulfed in a loud SLURP from under the dock.  There are some very large bluegill in the pond and I guess they have a real affection for crickets. 


After an hour or so the girls were shivering and ready to go back to the house.  Scott paddled them across the pond while I sat out on the dock with feet dangling in the water tossing crickets out out into the pond and moments later tangled with hand sized bluegills on nearly every cast. 


Scott and I stayed out until dark and though we never really had a chance to get serious on looking for bass it was still a lot of fun to get a fix with a mess of bluegills.  The bass will be there for next time.  

4 comments:

cofisher said...

I would guess that it was a perfect evening for everyone!

M.A. Hughes said...

Looks like a great unplanned evening with future fishing partners. May be time to tie up some crickets.

Anonymous said...

What camera or app are you using for the pictures??

Cameron Mortenson said...

Howard...I certainly was. Good times.

RR...crickets are definitely on the menu of these fish.

sf1530...I used my Nikon DSLR with a fisheye lens on all these images.