The Passion Continues to Build

If you read my Penns Creek Trip report post you already know that my son Brendan learned to fly fish on that trip and he definitely has the bug - no pun intended.  Since we've been back he has been wanting to do some more fly fishing but the weather just hasn't cooperated with our schedules until yesterday.  Instead of hitting the trout stream I figured a trip to the pond for some blue gills was in order.  I mentioned this pond in my Spring Practice post and that chasing the blue gills is a great place to start when teaching someone new.  Even though we threw my son to the wolves with his introduction to fly fishing on a tough river to fish, he never lost the enthusiasm for the fly rod so I knew he didn't need the pond for some easy fish, just some more practice.

The pond is kind of in a dip on one side so you are standing about 8 feet below the top of the field  and the other side the brush is as close as 10 feet, so this pond forces you to really pay attention to your back cast and forces you into some awkward positions but the blue gills really don't seem to care so much about your presentation so if it gets a little sloppy that is fine.

I changed spools and put the sink tip line on and tied on a green weenie, which has worked well here for the blue gills before, and then I sat down and kicked back on the hillside to watch and offer some comments and corrections.  It didn't take long for the hillside to remind him to check his back cast and even forced a couple of roll casts out of him but overall he still had all the fundamentals down and it's been almost two weeks since his first instruction. 

We could see the blue gills check out the fly and even mouth it once or twice but no real takers so I switched him over to a wooly worm for a little more life like action thanks to the hackle on the woolly worm.  On the second cast he was hooked up and I could tell right away from the bend in the line and the drag the fish was taking he had hooked into one of the bass that call this pond home.  He fought the fish like perfectly.  Letting it take line when it wanted to and taking it back as needed.  It wasn't long before we put the bass in the net and were taking a picture of it.  We thanked the bass for his help in this lesson and released him to fight another day.  Now I've fished this dang pond 6 times this year and haven't hooked into a bass yet.  Man I hate Kids.  Not really but you have to wonder some times don't you.

Brendan continued to work that pond from a couple of different angles and he landed another nice bass on the woolly worm and a pretty nice blue gill.  He did let me get a couple of casts in but I didn't catch a thing....By the way did I mention that I hate kids.. :)