Decided to take a trip up to the Raccoon River at Lenon Mills outside of Panora Iowa. Morning temps were in the upper 50’s as I arrived in the parking area. There were several folks out trying there luck at the dam, one guy brought up a nice walleye, measured to 18", which he released. I loaded up my flyrod with a good ole muddler minnow, donned my waders and headed down stream. First spot I hit was loaded with war mouth gills, and they were hungry.. LOL.. I did manage a little small mouth out of that area, but didn’t get a chance to land him. He was camera shy.
As I made my way downstream I tried several very nice pools of water that I was sure would hold fish. Much to my surprise I didn’t catch a thing. Spent a couple hours wandering down stream, with very little success. Several near misses, tried some top water action, again some hits, but no hook ups. I took a look at my leader and realized that it was quite a bit shorter than I had thought it was. So I tied on a four foot section of 4lb test line using a blood knot. Changed my fly over to a bead head woolly worm, brown colored, and in a few casts in the same area I had been fishing I saw my line jump. Set the hook and this little guy took my fly.. and boy it was in there deep. I learned two things, one is that they are keying on crawdad colors, and two, make sure your leader isn’t too short.
So after that little success I had a few more hits, one on that I missed, and one small large mouth. I decided to head back up to the areas I had fished earlier with no success and see if my changes would affect my luck. Well low and behold, it did. I stood in one area, fished it for about 30 min or so and was rewarded with some very nice fish. I landed three small mouth out of this one area and along with a couple of small large mouth. There were the rogue war mouths to contend with..LOL.. but it was fun catching them all on my fly rod. I’m heading up to northern Iowa here tomorrow for some more small mouth, then on up for some trout. So I’ll post reports when I get back. Tight lines all!!
I was on the Raccoon about 10 miles downstream from there on Sunday with no luck at all. Cast a silver/black floating rap which always seems to produce with no luck. Switched to a tiny firetiger bomber lure with no luck. Floated from Cottonwood bridge to P58 bridge. So many promising places but no fish. Wish I had tried some crawfish colors!
Made the trip to Panora area Saturday despite the 2″ of snow and 30 deg temps. Caught several smallies over 17″ and plenty under. Also got into several nice Walleye, great day overall!
you really caught those on the raccoon river? i didn’t realize there was a decent population of eyes in there, thought it was mostly smallmouth.
nice work.