Report from the Cass

[John Jarosz]

Hey!, let's make it a trilogy.  Or maybe it can be a Twilight Zone marathon.  Dan Scheda & I went to the Cass on Wed.  After Tuesday's meeting Dan went to his grandfather's house, who lives nearby, got some sleep & was up at 3:00 a.m. to drive to Irving in the Catt to night fish for catfish.  Fishing for cats in the Catt.  Sounds neat.  I vaguely remember doing something crazy like that when I was younger, or maybe it was a bad dream. I text him, I'm leaving my house at 9 & he ends up leaving the Catt at 9.  I show up at the Cassadaga Boat launch while he had just backed the trailer in the water to launch his boat.  My timing is getting better every year!  A minute sooner & I would have been there for the launch.  I like to leave launching to the young kids but will help if they need it.  Dan is an expert at backing up the trailer & sure doesn't need my help.

We set up shop near the "pink house" (where's he's caught muskies before & we've had a lot of follows) in the north lake, armed with fly-fishing enthusiasm from Nate's talk the night before,  & the 1st thing we notice is that there are no weeds.  Where we were is a spot where the weeds get almost to the surface & there are clear lanes in the weedbed, like spokes of a wheel.  We fish the spokes. Today, all the weeds were short.  It looks like the weedcutter had gone thru about two weeks earlier & trimmed everything way down.  We cast away & got nothing, nada, zero, zilch.  No fish, no follows, no nuthin'.

The only good part of the morning was the cloudy weather.  We pull up anchor, go to the opposite shore & cast away again.  Same/same as the first spot except there were weeds.  By that time though, the clouds were gone & the sun was high, bright & hot. 

Time for lunch.  Where's FAS when it's mealtime?  By now I should have had a couple of oranges, some oatmeal raisin cookies, more oranges, an energy bar, mixed nuts and a couple of licorice twizzlers...and more oranges.  My ham & salami sandwich on pumpernickel that I carefully put together that morning didn't seem as good as before.

After lunch, spot #3 & the first thing we notice are some HUGE bluegills under an overhanging tree.  Dan takes his spinning rod & immediately catches a couple of beauties that covered the palm of his hand.  He was getting tired of fly-casting (or maybe just tired from being up since 3 a.m.) & not seeing a thing so we went back to the launch to get our ultralights & fish for gills.

Back to the spot with the HUGE 'gills.  Dan gets his prop in a tangled mess in the weeds & can't move forward or backward.  He's revving the 2 stroke like he's at the start line of a drag strip.  In the water, the big mass of weeds at the end of his motor looks like a swinging garbage bag.  Finally, he clears the prop, we look around & there's not a bluegill to be see within a hundred yards.  So much for stealth fishing.

We go to bluegill spot #2, catch a dozen & a half gills & sunnies & call it a day.  Catch of the day though was a nice chunky 13" largemouth, always a good fight on an ultralight.

When you've got nothing to show for 1/2 day's fishing, Cassadaga 'gills are always a good standby.  Some are big, some small, but they make a good meal.  I can count on them for a couple of dinners & they help me keep the cost of fish below $9,000/lb.  That's about what a fish dinner is costing me these days.

Today at dinner, I'll be wearing a tux at the table.  No cheap meals for me.

At it again next Wednesday.  Muskies on the fly are a curse!

[Scott McKee]

Great report, John, but please don't ever write discouragingly of a ham and salami sandwich again, especially when made with pumpernickel! ;)