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By Sean Fenner, November 9, 2009

The California Department of Fish and Game has posted the list of the fishing spots that they will be stocking this week for Region 5-South Coast Region. Remember to practice catch and release as much as possible, pick up trash when you see it, and respect this resource so that everyone can enjoy it!!!

(Rainbow Trout)

(Channel Catfish)

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By Sean Fenner, November 7, 2009

I got up this morning, and the first things that went through my mind were “I want an Iced Coffee from McDonalds and I want to fish”. So, I took up Dan’s advice and decided to head over to La Mirada to see if I could get a Catfish on the fly. The day started out great I caught a few Juvenile Largemouth, and hooked up with a Cat that went straight for a sunken cement block and broke me off so quick I had barely had it on the line. But on the very next cast I got the surprise of my life an Oscar!!! Now obviously someone felt this guy got a little too big for his aquarium and decided to dump him on the Park Lake down the street, but man was it fun to catch on a fly. This fish fought extremely hard for it’s size and there is nothing like adding a species to the lifelist. If that is not the most awesome thing that has ever happened to me, I caught another one just a couple of casts later. I think that after your blood pressure and heart rate go up that high you are supposed to have a doctor check you out, but we will see if there is any permanent damage!

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By Sean Fenner, November 7, 2009

A fly that I really love to use in the LateFall/Early Winter at Urban Park Lakes is the Bead Head Woolly Bugger. I like to use a size 8 0r 10, when I am out, those sizes seem to get the most bites across the board. I have been out fishing a Woolly Bugger and caught a Bluegill, Green Sunfish, Largemouth Bass, Carp, and Catfish in the same session with the same fly. If that is not versatile, then I don’t know what is! The reason that I really like to use the Bead Head in the fall, and not the Cone Head Bugger is simply the number of bites. In my opinion the fish slow down, the water is colder, and the fish will sit looking up for the next meal. To me the Cone Head lands too hard and gets right in the face of the fish, which seems to spook them a little. So, good news it’s late fall early winter, and there is some great fishing to be had. Almost no one fishes Park Lakes right now. They are just waiting for the heavy Trout Stocks, and all those other species are just waiting to be caught. Get them at an unbeatable price over at The Trout Spot!

“Richard over at The Trout Spot has been generous enough to give our readers a 10% discount on any purchases made on his site. Just reference the promotion code UFV at checkout”

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By Dan Zambrano, November 6, 2009

Wouldn’t you know it? As soon as I write a piece on patterns and consistency, I get thrown a curve ball and am forced back to my stand-by position that “nature writes the textbooks but doesn’t necessarily read them”.

Case in point: I recently wrote that much of what we do in fly-fishing is to look for identifiable patterns that we can imitate or exploit.

Well, as soon as that declaration was in print — stuff happened.

Not that I’m complaining. To the contrary, I ended up having a good morning…  a really good morning. Sure, it included a breakfast burrito with a little crow in it, but it was still a good morning and besides, I was able to spit out most of the feathers before they caused any permanent damage.

You see, Mondays are generally our “office and errand” day. Normally, I’m up and immediately at the computer or fixing the stuff that needs fixing or out the door with “to-do” list, checkbook, dirty laundry, stack of mail and an enormous cup-of-coffee-to-make-it-all-possible in hand.

But this last Monday, thanks in part to the time change, I awoke with the first rays of the sun peeking over… well, the neighbor’s house — but you know what I mean.  Anyway, I awoke to a beautiful, clear and sunny sky.

It was one of those mornings that seem to happen every morning in the movies unless it is a horror film, which I never watch anyway. It was simply too good of a morning to start off in front of the computer, no matter how fresh or tasty the coffee or how urgent the e-mail messages.

So I quickly readied up, kissed my still sleeping wife and headed off to La Mirada Park.

Sure enough, there were numerous early morning walkers, a knot of laughing, joking older gentlemen occupying a couple of shaded benches set back on a short rise, a couple of maintenance workers, but no fisher-folk.

I rigged up a new carp fly that I recently purchased from Mad River Outfitters  and began some “research”.

Within five minutes, I was rewarded with a Largemouth Bass followed, in short order, by several more Bass. Sure, they were on the small size, but they beat out the boatload of waiting-to-be-opened spam e-mails from a whole crew of totally honest attorneys in Nigeria representing the multi-million dollar estates of recently and tragically deceased relatives I never knew I had.

I continued a slow, leisurely pace around the lake pulling in small Bass about every five minutes.

About half way around the lake, as I was stripping in the fly with short, fast pulls, my rod doubled over.

That doesn’t happen often enough, so it feels good just putting it in writing. In fact, I’ll write it again: My rod doubled over instead of the normal gentle twitching that indicates a Trout or Panfish or even the short Bass I was catching on the other end of the line.

My first thought was Carp. After all, I did have a carp fly on the end of my tippet and there are numerous large Carp in the lake but… something didn’t add up.  There was no line-eating, blazing fast run, no wild thrashing, no splashing, just a hard, steady, consistent pull.

My next thought was turtle. I hate snagging turtles. We used to work at a vet hospital that was licensed to see wildlife and frequently an angler would bring in a turtle that he or she had snagged or hooked. It was always a huge pain to try and remove the hook or untangle the line from a ticked off, biting, peeing and snapping turtle. The soft-shelled turtles were the worse. They have these incredibly long necks, nasty beaks and even nastier dispositions that make handling them difficult at best and dangerous at worst.

So, I groaned and hoped that it wouldn’t be a turtle and I wouldn’t lose my new fly to some hissing, whizzing soft shell.

Still my rod stayed doubled over.

Whatever was at the other end was moving in a slow zig-zag pattern and it was getting tired. Since I only had a 7x tippet I wanted to be very careful. (I know, I know, I should have been using a 4x or so but I really had only intended to play with the carp fly before switching over to something smaller. It just started working so darn well.)

Anyway, I glanced at my watch and decided to time this little tug of war. At eight and half minutes, I finally saw the head of my opponent – a catfish! And a decent size one at that.

At twelve minutes plus change, I was able to land a ten and half inch cat AND get my fly back.

Needless to say, it has been a lot of fun telling some of my other fishin’ buddies that I landed a catfish on a fly. Most of these guys are the powerbait and mackerel strips type of catfish anglers so the looks on their faces have been priceless.

Of course, they instantly remind me that it is not the normal “pattern” for cats to hit flies.

To which I reply, “Good thing fish don’t follow web blogs, eh?”

I love this addiction called urban fly fishin’.

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By Sean Fenner, November 2, 2009

The California Department of Fish and Game has posted the list of the fishing spots that they will be stocking this week for Region 5-South Coast Region. Remember to practice catch and release as much as possible, pick up trash when you see it, and respect this resource so that everyone can enjoy it!!!

(Rainbow Trout)

(Channel Catfish)

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By Dan Zambrano, November 1, 2009

If nothing else, fishing is about patterns. We obsessed anglers spend serious amounts of time seeking to figure out movement patterns, feeding patterns, breeding patterns and behavioral patterns. We watch and try to understand weather patterns, and lunar patterns and tidal patterns. We pour over articles on hydrological flow patterns and sedimentation patterns. We follow trends in equipment and materials to better grasp those patterns. We study solar patterns and wind patterns and insect life cycle patterns.

If we are smart, we establish a pattern of making notes and keeping records and filing away bits and pieces of information in the recesses of our minds. And if we are careful, we acquire a pattern of consistently catching fish. Otherwise, we just establish a pattern for wasting time while beating the surface of water.

In this regard, we are very much like any other predator in pursuit of prey: the Mountain Lion waiting silently along the well-worn deer trail leading down to the stream, the spider sitting in the middle of its web carefully placed to intersect hapless moths as they shuttle along well established flight paths just beneath the canopy, the red-tailed hawk circling the open areas between buildings where they have the best opportunity to catch the field mice scurrying along their trails from burrow to burrow.

Likewise, it is no secret that in the urban fishing environment, the objects of our obsession living in these heavily pressured lakes and streams quickly learn our patterns and respond accordingly. Normally voracious Bass will seriously slow down their normal eating habits and watch hundreds of dollars worth of lures pass by every weekend.

Carp at many SoCal urban lakes will practically go into some Zen-like state and sit tight all day Saturday and Sunday only to cautiously go active again on Monday.

The long and short of it is we are all trying to figure out the other guy’s patterns so we can claim a pattern of success.

Now of all the patterns I try to monitor, the one pattern I rather dislike is the annual change from Daylight Savings Time. Perhaps if I had a herd of cows that I needed to milk at some sick hour of the morning and needed the light or if my field plow didn’t have headlights I might feel differently but this time change nonsense really bugs me. It disrupts my pattern…or as one of our formerly hippie clients likes to say, “it harshes my mellow”.

Apparently, I am not alone in this irritation.

This year the time change falls on Halloween. I haven’t looked far enough ahead to know if that is how it is going to stay or if it is going to move around yet again but for now it falls on Halloween. Not that I’m big into the Halloween thing but our church hosts an alternative event to trick or treating every year so I will be busy most of Saturday afternoon and evening.

Anyway, my fishin’ buddy, Sean must have felt the same sense of annoyance with the time change as he text messaged yesterday to ask if I wanted to get in one last late afternoon of fishing before the time change. The annoyance part was communicated with the closing comment, “stinkin’ time change”.

Since both of our lovely brides were going to be attending an all girl event with singing and squealing and hugging and such, I was only too happy to respond with a yes.

We headed over to Cerritos Regional Park where we knew we wouldn’t get chased out at sunset and where the path around the lake is actually lighted – in case the fishing turned out to be really good and we ended up staying past dark.

The sun was sinking fast so we wasted no time in getting on the water. We were rewarded with immediate hits by some young-of-the-year bass and some bluegill. We quickly figured out that the most productive pattern was to cast parallel to the edge of the pond and strip in line fairly quickly.

I headed off to the left and Sean headed to the right. I had a few more hits but Sean seemed to have found the pocket and got several hits on his dropper nymph.

As it got darker, we both switched over to krystal buggers. Sean again found the ball of fish and pulled in quite a few decent panfish. Again, he figured out that the pattern for these particular fish was for them to hit hard and then move, en masse, along the bank. He was able to follow them as they moved and scored many more strikes.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of fly fishin’ in the dark – I can barely see the hook eye as it is, and my pattern has been to pack up and go home when I can’t see my hands anymore but this was a great way to send off the last remaining afternoon of DST. We both concluded that having a lighted park relatively close to home was the perfect remedy to the “dark by 5:00 blues”.

We decided on the spot that we will make it our pattern to return to this little park during the short days of winter and count our blessings that we don’t have to hang up the fly rods until the Spring thaw.

I love this addiction called urban fly fishin’.