Last two weekends

The last two Saturdays I fished a couple of my favorite ponds out of my float tube. I had hoped to catch some late-spawners, but that didn't pan out. I did catch a few nice males last Saturday. They were very shallow and very agressive.

Since the shallow fishing wasn't really panning out, I decided to try a different pond and see if I could find some spawning fish there. No luck, though. So, I moved out into deeper water armed with my new Smartcast sonar. Almost immediately, I started marking fish everywhere. They were about 7-10 FOW and well off the bank (literally out in the middle of the pond, 50-100 yards from shore.) Fishing at these depths, I started catching gills regularly -- nothing huge, but nice fish.

After catching these, I tried a different tactic. A couple of years earlier, I had noticed that I could pick up fish by "trolling" very shallow. I would just cast the jig out, let it sink a few feet, and start kicking my feet. I quickly found out it worked on this pond, too. I started with a trout magnet and picked up a few gills. Then, I made a long cast with my fly rod and tried the same thing with a small streamer. Bang! Gill on! I'd paddle 30-40 yards across the pond and pick up a few gills. Then, I'd just turn around and repeat. These were nice gills, too -- all over 8". I'm not sure if there was a hatch on or what, but they were very shallow right out in the middle of the pond.

I went back to the same pond this past Saturday to try again. The fish were deep again, and I managed to catch around twenty. I did not catch any fish trolling, though. There was a little chop on the water which may have affected the shallow, middle-of-the-pond bite.

Sounds like fun!

Interesting read. I've never float tube fished but it sounds like you had fun and were pretty versatile with the tactics.