TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

I’ve moved farther south along the Rio Grande and have set up shop for a while at Caballo Lake State Park. Yesterday I fished the river below the dam, which has almost zero flow coming out of the lake, so it is a series of ponds, really. The one closest to the dam was packed with fish and the competition for food must be fierce. The Clouser Minnows I tied for Elephant Butte a couple of weeks ago hooked six different species and two smaller flies found another two types.

First up, a huge surprise… I was retrieving the Clouser through shin to knee deep water on my first or second cast, when I strip set into a heavyweight fish. A blue catfish, of all things! It was foul hooked behind the dorsal fin though, so not fair caught, but quite a bend in the four weight.

The next fish on the line was a fun-sized largemouth bass.

The next one was really surprising, though I’d been forewarned because I had caught a small one the previous evening. Folks, meet the New Mexican walleye!

I caught at least a dozen of these in small sizes, but that one was pretty decent at 18 inches or so. This next one is more representative of the fish in the pool.

I had set out with the intention to sight fish for carp, but the water was too off-color to see past a few inches. I knew they were there though, because I’d seen them jump. I had a couple of shots casting to a big shadow the previous day, but I didn’t get the fly in front of his face.

Yesterday, there was a crew working on the dam, and they turned on a pump to drain the area they were working on. As soon as that small current started flowing into the pool, a mob of carp nosed right up into the rocks to feed on whatever was being washed out, and I could see their backs out of the water. I switched over to a small buggy fly, something like a Breadcrust, but the cast was a bit too long to accurately place. I walked around to where I could have a better shot, and they turned off the pump just as I got in place. The carp moved away in short order, but I pulled out yet another species while blind casting to where the carp had been, a small white crappie. The carp had been in the rocks on the left of the photo below.

I tied on a purple micro leech, thinking the dark color and seductive slinkiness of the pine squirrel might turn on the carp, but all I got back was this little bluegill.

I went back to the Clouser and cast to some different water from my new spot, and pulled out species number six, what I believe to be a freshwater drum?

After the numerous little walleye, the white bass were probably the most common. These fish were what I had tied the little size six Clousers for back at Elephant Butte, so job done!

I circled around the pool to cast from a new location, and snuck up on a big carp that was slowly nosing along in ten inches of water. I quickly swapped the Clouser for the leech, and tried to land it a couple of feet ahead of the fish so that I could twitch it as he got close. But when my fly line landed on the water, he blew up and skedaddled. Oh well, I at least got the fly to land where I wanted it.

There was a small carp that was regularly jumping in the center of the pool, and I spent the remaining time casting towards it with the Clouser. On one cast, I felt a little bump and strip-set into open water, nothing was there. As I continued the retrieve though, I came tight to a fish, and it darted to the right before jumping clear out of the water. I watched as my fly came unbuttoned from the carp’s mouth. Damn it! Ha, I never really thought a carp would eat a chartreuse and white Clouser Minnow, but they will!

So to summarize, the green and white, bead chain Clouser minnow caught:

• A blue catfish (foul hooked 😦 )
• A largemouth bass
• Several walleye
• Several white bass
• A freshwater drum
• A common carp (not landed!)

As Lefty Kreh was so well known for saying, “If it ain’t chartreuse, it ain’t no use”!

Maybe I’ll go back and try the gray ones to see if the axiom holds true.