2015-01-25 Neighborhood pond confidence booster

[Andy is OptiMystic]

Only my second outing of the year; the first was a total bust in wind and waves at a big lake. It was a really nice day for January, but I had a lot to do around the house. But I could manage an hour just down the street.

This was the rig for today:

That worked pretty well. That's a balsa float with the rubber tube attachments so you can slide for different depths without damaging the line. It's very light and doesn't cast incredibly well, but it also never passes the jig in the air and doesn't get tangled. That little tungsten jig is about all it can handle; it was mostly submerged.

So 2015 is the year I get serious about panfish, right?

This little guy didn't get the memo:

So my first fish of 2015 was a bass. I can deal with that. The next 10 fish were all bream, mostly in the 7" range and looked like this:

I also snapped one smaller one because it had a little more color:

A nice quick outing to get the year rolling.

[Jim Gronaw]

Open water fishi nin January is a good thing in my book!

So many small, local municipal and park lakes like this are vastly overlooked by the masses, yet they can have outstanding fishing for many species. WTG Andy!

[Slip Sinker]

Looks like a great day!

[DAVID L EITUTIS]

HEY ANDY GREAT PICS !!!! FANTASTIC tutorial of the days outing too .......

[Andy is OptiMystic]

It felt like spring. I timed it right; my hour was 2-3 and I think it was above 60 on the sunny bank where the reflection doubled the sunshine and the trees behind me shielded me from the slight breeze.

I probably discount the fishing as not being legitimate more than I should. It has been several years since the last time I went there and didn't catch anything, but they won't hit just anything; I have given away a lot of jig heads and grubs to other guys who weren't doing as well. So it is somewhat meaningful that I did well with the waxies and my hand tied jig (which probably deserve credit in that order).

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

Nice report Andy......glad you got out a little while.......spring is coming!