Lately fishing for me has been pretty patchy. With work situations pulling me off the water for the past 3 weeks I was ready to get out and rip some lips. So, a few nights back I hit up my little brother to see if he was down to go out and chase em…

Obviously he instantly dropped whatever garbage he was up to and before we knew it we were standing on the shore of our favorite retention pond…yes…you heard that right. A good ole dirty retention pond. This pond has produced quality fish for a few years now. When the wind is too bad to chase snook on the bay, we make our way over here and see what is crushin’.

Most of the time we end up doing pretty well. This night we were able to catch a dozen fish within an hour or so. Most were in the 1-3lb range, however some were nicely over the 5lb mark. I spend most of my time chasing bass with my 5wt Response rod by Sage.

This rod is a must have for the freshwater fly fisherman. It brings accuracy, sensitivity, and comfort to the plate while delivering a nice platform to chase multiple species of fish. It handles my trout flies as well as big bass streamer patterns very well.

This fly works great and does an amazing job of getting big bass to bite. I like to tie it with a 5 inch olive chenille tail, and then finish the shank with black sparkle chenille, as well as a palmered olive hackle. The change in chenille probably isn’t important, but the hackle does make a huge difference. This allows the fly to push lots of water, which makes it a great night time fly pattern.

I hope that this article gives you the motivation to start doing whatever it takes to test the ponds in your area for big bass at night. Remember, just cause it doesn’t look fishy, doesn’t mean there aren’t big fish. All a big bass needs is good oxygen flow in the water, and a good solid food sorce. If the duck pond down the street has plenty of bream and shiners, then chances are it has some monsters  in there as well!

As always, keep your hearts right, and your lines tight.

Peace!