Memorial Day

To those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to safeguard this country's freedoms, we remember you today. To all the servicemen and women, thank you as well. Everyone have a great Memorial Day!

Minnow catcher

My son participated in a two-day youth tennis tournament this weekend where he did well. On Sunday he was too tired to fish but youngest daughter wanted to head to the park and use her dip net to catch minnows. So that is what she and I did.

With her dip net and mason jar, my youngest went around the edge of the park pond swiping the water and collecting tiny fish. She was having fun. In one spot I sort of directed the fish towards her.

So that she could see in the water a little better being it was sunny, I had her wear a pair of Native Eyewear polarized sunglasses that I picked up on sale at REI recently. I had not been able to find my good pair of Smith Optics sunglasses that I have owned for over six years.

Anyways, those sunglasses looked really big on her. We spent about 45 minutes scooping up minnows so she had a couple of dozen in the jar. We released them all and left. She had fun.

One thing I noticed was there were a lot of sunfish in that pond so at some point I will be back with my son with the 5 weight fly rods to catch 'em.

Community Park Fishing

A chunky green sunfish

This morning my wife was helping with coordinating a car wash fundraiser for the high school band so I had the kids. I told my son and youngest daughter to get dressed as I was going to take them to a local park with a couple of ponds that we haven't been to in a long time.

I used to fish this park years ago and it used to contain large brim and some decent bass but droughts and then a really bad flood years ago changed it and seemed to have wiped out most of the bass. The park went through a renovation last year with a new club house with deck, sidewalks, new playscape, parking and boulders placed along the pond shore for small casting decks. It is quite nice now but how was the fishing?

These little guys were super colorful ... and fun!

I only took my son's Albright 5wt fly rod as I wanted him to practice his casting and catch some brim. We started with the quick reminder lesson. His false casts had nice tight looks but whenever he made his final cast, he would drop the tip and open up the loop so we worked on that. It was also very windy which for any fly fisher is a pain. He soon started catching small brim quite regularly.

After a while, he mentioned going over to the second pond on the other end of the park. The only problem with that pond is that except for one spot, it is surrounded by trees. Of course, the one spot faces into the wind so casting was a challenge. However, he was catching some better quality brim. He ended up landing a big green sunfish as well as small bass for some of the better catches from this spot. After a couple hours being at the park, regularly catching brim, we all got hungry and left to get pizza for lunch.

I enjoyed taking the kids out to the park and watching my son fish. I hope to do this again soon.