Lowland Pond Surprise Crappie Fishing - Unicorn 🦄

[Divad]

Last night I had an itch for some crappie fried fish sticks, a taste I recently acquired. So, I targeted a lowland pond/lake that usually produces. Right off the highway, the water doesn’t get a line much in summer but gets fished out during spring plants yearly.



Nothing was nibbling chartreuse, a go-to at this lake for crappie. I switched, confidence was in the brightest leech I had for such conditions.



After a long troll with 60ft of T6 I started to strip the fly fast in a disgruntled fashion, motivated by the thus far nibble-less outing. I was about 3/4 of the way through stripping in when THUD! It felt like I hit a suspended tree, rod bent, nothing moved. Time stood still, cars stopped moving, birds froze mid flight, and my heartbeat started to race as the ‘hooked something’ began to move.

I’ll spare the additional comments on the run it took, the usual desperation to keep 60ft from tangling or the amount of bugs I caught with my jaw in such surprise.



I’d say it was 30” but measuring was hard and I knew the temps weren’t loving of such fish out of the water, so I made haste and snapped the above shot quickly.



The oddest proportioned trout, extremely long and skinny, but with a massive tail. I believe it to be a steelhead plant from February that wintered over successfully. I’m a little dumbfounded; in a pond with low oxygen, high temps, a slew of invasives, and a usual (but this year vacant) algae bloom. I wonder what the meat looked like, now that the fish has become all chrome again? Or if anything was in its stomach? Oh well, hopefully a kid can keep it one day to answer such.

Somehow I didn’t land a crappie, but did manage to hook another large fish for a run but spit the fly.



And this little bow, 6 months from 1/2lb plant but strangely unclipped. Either he didn’t grow much from those plants (which this pond has few resources to do so) or another unicorn I was unaware the pond produces.

What a surprising body of water I thought I knew.

 

[Tallguy]

Cool fish. There are some lakes that receive spawned out hatchery steelhead returns in the spring. any chance there is one in your watershed? Would explain a skinny hungry steelhead in late summer anyways.

 

[Divad]

Cool fish. There are some lakes that receive spawned out hatchery steelhead returns in the spring. any chance there is one in your watershed? Would explain a skinny hungry steelhead in late summer anyways.

Sure do, and this is one of them.

If this was one of the other stocked surplus lakes with flowing water and/or depth I wouldn’t of considered it such a unicorn. But this is really a man made pond, max depth 25ft or so, no flowing water. Very small hatches of insects if any, little crustacean life, low oxygen throughout column and no distinct thermocline.