Sunday was a beautiful 80 degrees, with a light breeze across the neighborhood lake. I'd finally recovered from a relapse thanks to weekly infusions of immunoglobulins, and was confident that I was strong enough to handle my first fishing trip in two months. The yak was prepped and slid into the water with not a problem. I gingerly stepped in and paddled off wearing a wide grin of contentment.



The lake is shallow, the waters warm. I tried out my latest addition to the boat - a terrarium thermometer I intended to use to measure water temps and establish feeding patterns. It read water temps of 76-78 degrees, with air temps of 80-82 degrees. I'm not sure I believe it. Anyway, I threw out wooly buggers along the bank, looking for fishy spots. I wanted to try out a batch of heavy bass flies I had picked up from chefmike, but I left my 8wt at home and had to rely on my small 3wt with a more limited fly selection. No matter, the bass weren't fussy and I started hooking some nice small ones.



The banks were yielding fish slowly, and what ones I landed were not the monsters I was hoping for. My sight wandered to the water features of the lake - two fountains and an inlet pipe that periodically spewed water into the lake. I anchored upwind of the nearest fountain and started casting across the water that was disturbed by the falling mist. It was a good plan, this was hiding in there; I forgot my ruler, but estimating from my hand size in the photo it was 16-17 inches. Large by my standards, and not far from my PB of 21 inches.



All of my catches were on an unweighted olive bugger with a medium-to-fast figure-eight retrieve. I'm still learning about structure and vegetation as it pertains to "fishiness", but I'm happy to be making catches as I learn.

Nice!!

That had to have been fun on ultralite! Temps sound right in shallows, found 80 for short period yesterday.

Very nice. Cool pictures too!

Very nice! Congrats.

Thanks for the comments! Fish photos are actually stills of the video I ran from a waterproof Lumix DMC-TS25 camera mounted on my landing net - I'm pretty pleased with the way they came out.

Lconn, the big one definitely tested me on the light rod. I'm wary of fighting big fish on small rods, but this one had a lot of fight left and swam away strong. Some previous encounter had left it without an eye on the right side, I wish I'd snapped a photo but I didn't have the time to mess around. One day I hope it becomes Old One-Eye, the neighborhood lake monster.

I'm glad to see you're enjoying that Ride.

I certainly am, Dan! I just wish I could enjoy it more often - between cold weather and illness, I've only had it out on the water a handful of times since I got it from you. Now, I'm ready to stop spending time in the garage accessorizing, and instead get out on the water in it every weekend!

Nice good job

Nice fish.

Congrats on the outing glad to hear your feeling better

Like those pic in pics. 1st time seeing 4me

glad to hear you were able to make it back out and get some.fish. thats a nice looking neighborhood pond.

Nice outing Mac!

Thanks all, I'm glad to be feeling better and lucky to have a nice stomping ground with what is turning out to be a good little fishy ecosystem - they might not be monsters, but they're enough to put up a good fight!

The pic-in-pics are an experiment to keep track of which patterns caught which fish, but I like the way they look as well. I'll keep playing around with them until they look just right. I'm hoping to get some videos eventually, but am still messing with the camera positioning.