Momma said there'd be days like this

[Philly 0]

Well, I was suppose to go fishing with a buddy Friday but in the middle of the night a drunk driver came up my street, lost control took out my neighbor's car then rolled his and nailed mine enough to put a big dent in my passenger side rear door and take out it's window. So instead of fishing I spent the day dealing with my insurance cleaning the glass up in my back seat and covering up the broken window.

The same friend called me last Saturday and said let's hit the flooded quarry as sunrise tomorrow. Sounded good to me. The old quarry is in a county park just outside of Philly has a fenced floating fishing pier. So it's easy to fly fish off of. My buddy was using worms. You could see bass swimming around and large school of sunfish between the pier and the bank. Second cast I picked up this sunfish. I'm leaning toward it being a green sunfish because of the coloring and large mouth.

 

 

I'll post a picture of the fly I used as soon as I take one of it.

 

It went downhill from there. About an hour or so later I caught this one on a top water

 

 

Ended the day about two hours after we got there with this monstrous largemouth

 

 

I caught three more than my buddy did with his worms. The quarry does get a lot of pressure but I figured the fish had seen few if any flies. We talked with another guy who had showed up and he said he and his friends had done well on top waters in the evening. So my buddy and I are going to try and hit it one evening or give it a shot just before sun up.

[mikechell 0]

You have the species correct. Pretty little ones, too. I am surprised to hear that nothing hit the worms ... oh, wait ... are you talking artificial worms?

 

One thing about fishing rock quarries back in Indiana ... they had almost NO aquatic insects. There were a LOT of crayfish. There were a lot of minnows and small fry. There were usually terrestrials ... hoppers, crickets, roaches and ants along the shorelines.

 

So, minnow imitations (worked like injured bait fish on top or jerked through the water), Crayfish imitations (worked slow and methodically along the bottom) and top water noise makers near the shoreline (like terrestrial bugs and frogs falling into the water) were the lures and flies of choice. Your buddy, if he was using artificial worms, was probably working them too fast (common mistake in clear rocky bottoms).

 

Small natural colors also produce well in clear quarry water.

 

Good luck.

[Philly 0]

Nope not plastic worms. He was using live ones. Both the bass and the sunfish would swim up to them. Look at them and swim off. Next time we go there. I might bring a light spinning rod with 6 lb fluorocarbon, and some small drop shot hooks and just thread the worm on the hook and see if a more natural presentation works. No jig, no split shot, no bobber. The guy we talked with had some follows with a jig and pig crayfish combination, no takes. Actually, didn't think to bring any crayfish patterns with me. I did have a couple of bait fish patterns. Just didn't get around to using them. It's a bit early around here for grasshoppers and I didn't see any caterpillars falling from the trees.

 

This is what I caught the first one on.

 

[Blackwater Virgil 0]

Really clear water CAN be a problem sometimes. If you can find some fertilizer with very low numbers (like 2-2-2 I think it is?) and dump a bag or two into the water, you may get some algae growth and that will give insects something to feed on, and THEN the insects will be ABLE to grow there. Just a thought. The algae gives the fish (and YOU) some cover, provides a MUCH more productive fishery, and usually makes fishing easier. Even a couple of bags, fed out slowly so as to not "burn" the fish with it, might just transform that little fishery, and make it MUCH more productive. With all the stuff already falling into the water, or growing there, it can only add to the fun, and fertilizer isn't expensive, either.

[corney 0]

That would cost you a pile of money if you got caught doing that in Canada!

 

It's actually a problem around some lakes like the one I live on because there is a great deal of agriculture around the lake so we get fertilizer run off and livestock run off. Not to mention all the 30 year old septic systems that MAY leak from all the houses around the lake.

 

Don't move a rock of cut trees down either that will get you a fine as well!

[FlaFly 0]

Mike's right about quarries, to a point. In Fla in the phosphate mining area, we have lots of old mine pits that are deep, straight up-and-down sides, and virtually no littoral zone. And most of them are highly eutrophic to boot, so there is oxygen only near the surface. Thus, no benthic insects like chironomids. There are occasional adult bugs like whirlygigs etc. that fish might eat, but these waters really don't have any fish to speak of. Don't know if your northern state quarry pits are anoxic too.

[Philly 0]

Killing some time here, 4 days after having my left hip completely replaced and bored with watching the tube. In home PT starts tomorrow. Fishing is still a few weeks down the road.

 

FlaFly

A lot of the quarries around here have thriving fish populations. The one I was fishing at doesn't drop down immediately and there are shallow areas where roads ran down into them. I saw at close to two dozen bass that morning and twice that many sunfish. My buddy caught a 20 inch + trout a couple of weeks before. So at some point the state or county stocked some trout.