Henry Rifle Forums

After 60 some years of fishing and going everyplace and largely spending a lot of gas money for the boats and truck, my back yard pond, full of largemouth bass and bluegills is my favorite fishing hole. It's not far from the supper table. What's you favorite fishing hole?

I stopped fishing since the kids have grown up and away. I'm not close to any fishing spots. Over an hour away from any lake or stream that can be fished. Gave the boat and motor away to a cousin several years ago 'cause it wasn't being used. I'd be at it for sure if I had your pond though! Looks great.
Jake

Shakey Jake wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 07, 2020 12:16 pm

I stopped fishing since the kids have grown up and away. I'm not close to any fishing spots. Over an hour away from any lake or stream that can be fished. Gave the boat and motor away to a cousin several years ago 'cause it wasn't being used. I'd be at it for sure if I had your pond though! Looks great.
Jake

It's nice to be able to get up in the morning and watch the sun come up and watching the horses out in the pasture while I sit there and catch the days supper. The pond has grown wonderful with big hand size bluegills and 18 inch bass and they just keep getting bigger. I can fly fish, spin cast or just sit back with a bobber and worm and get all the action I want. No more $100 days to drive and catch nothing.

Hot dog TR! That looks right perfect. Mine is Henry's Lake in eastern Idaho, but, I have to GET there first. I like yours.

Rifletom wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:59 am

Hot dog TR! That looks right perfect. Mine is Henry's Lake in eastern Idaho, but, I have to GET there first. I like yours.

Thank you. It's nice when you get that urge to eat fresh fish and it's right outside for you. Actually this pond is a gift from my wife. She and I used to fish every chance we had. She is actually the one person who got me into Musky fishing for those giants. We spent a lot of time driving, put on a lot of miles and fished for entire weekends just to catch and release. Then her mom got to the point she could not be alone so we took her in and made a room just for her and even put a large trailer hooked up to our house so she could be with us and to take care of her. Of course this meant that we could no longer leave her and we could no longer rely on anybody to feed our horses for us and so we could not go anywhere at all. She was with us for 7 years until she passed last February. My wife knew how much I loved to fish so she satisfied my itch.
Life is good!

Erie

Jdl447 wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:04 pm

561D8719-1060-4E6F-A217-B75B88A08ED4.jpegErie

Love Lake Erie fishing. It's been awhile since my wife and I fished for Walleyes up there but we sold our boat which wasn't quite big enough at 17 foot.
At times, I wished I would have had a 30 footer. Yikes, that water can get rough in a hurry. Last time I was up at Lake Erie, we went out to go dive on a couple ship wrecks but by the time we got out to where the wreck was, we couldn't even get into the water it was so rough so we had to abort the dives.

I can’t identify a specific hole, but I count the entire upper Arkansas River valley as my ‘spot’. I was up there for several days last week and caught numerous fish. The largest was only about 15 inches, rainbow trout. All catch and release, I don’t need any more fish in the freezer.

There are a lot of beautiful places in this country. But I count this one as my home.

Team Roper wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:00 pm

Jdl447 wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:04 pm

561D8719-1060-4E6F-A217-B75B88A08ED4.jpegErie

Love Lake Erie fishing. It's been awhile since my wife and I fished for Walleyes up there but we sold our boat which wasn't quite big enough at 17 foot.
At times, I wished I would have had a 30 footer. Yikes, that water can get rough in a hurry. Last time I was up at Lake Erie, we went out to go dive on a couple ship wrecks but by the time we got out to where the wreck was, we couldn't even get into the water it was so rough so we had to abort the dives.

We call Erie the washing machine. That’s my brother holding the fish. He was yorkin a few minutes before.

My favorite fishing hole is Lover Boy pool on Anne Marie lake in Labrador Canada. Brook Trout lovers paradise! I landed my four biggest Brookies in 60 plus years of fishing!

Our Favorite Fishing hole was a Farm Pond on a 500 acre black angus cattle farm back in VA. Miss T had known the owners since she was a wee girl. Access to the pond was limited to the family, but the owner considered her family. He knew that we were CPR, Catch, Photo, and Release; and that I would take care of any trespassers for him. It was a beautiful location, and you had to drive thru three farm gates, across four pastures, and ford a stream to reach it.


Oh, and it had some Monster Bass in it. This one is about 25 inches.


Mine here is 23 plus...


I have a video of a 28 inch bass, but don't know how to post that one. It was a joy to hook and get to the side of the boat, then it spit the frog in my face, laughed at me, and left.

A long view of the pond:


Miss T with another Monster Bass... this could be the same fish, just a bit bigger, 25-1/4" now.


What looks like slime on the pond in that cove is called Duck Weed and are actually little pellet like things floating on the water and I loved it. I'd throw a ribbet frog and reel it back just fast enough to keep it on the surface, and it's feet would tap the water... tap, tap, tap. The bass would get so mad they would explode out of the water and attack the frog from ABOVE.

Miss T caught HER monsters fishing a worm ON the bottom, with a weighted hook, so the worm was floating just above the bottom tail waving. Patient. Me, I wanted top water action with the baitcaster or the fly rod. She tied a pond mouse for me, and a 4" Grasshopper of her own design, a company made cutters for. I caught monster bass on that hopper.

Deschutes River, 1/2 mile below the Wickiup dam.

Having grown up in northeastern NJ, my contribution here is going to be more of a favorite fishing "situation" more than a specific location. My town growing up was bordered by the Passaic River, which was pretty much an open sewer for decades. My dad used to tell stories of swimming in it when he was a kid, but told those as a contrast to how it looked when I was in my teens. At low tide, the banks were mud flats that stunk like anything, and if you threw rocks in the water near the mud flats, a nice big rainbow of an oil slick appeared.
Fast forward about 30 years and the efforts to clean up the river have paid dividends. The lower stretches of the river have carp, white perch, and at certain times of the year, striped bass. I know because I've caught them all. The farther upriver you get, the more you find largemouth and smallmouth bass, pickerel, and the state also stocked tiger muskies. The river is still not thought of in a positive way, years of abuse is hard to overcome. But for those of us that suffered the teasing and abuse of the masses, it's turned into a pretty amazing fishery.
My favorite was to park at the back end of an industrial complex, or next to a bridge, or by a billboard along the river, lock up the truck, and then go exploring along the trails that can always be found along both banks. In the upper areas, where it flows through wetlands, there are numerous ponds and what could be called oxbows that hold giant carp and some very aggressive bass. This kind of urban fishing has some complications, and you often walk near homeless encampments, and the banks are still strewn with trash and old tires just about everywhere, but the water is clean enough for smallies, which is pretty clean.
I've fished small feeder creeks that I could almost jump across, and caught 10-12" bass in the shadow of a Home Depot and a Shop Rite from the Saddle River. A nice 5' rod is a good tool in those streams that look more like a drainage ditch.
I think the part I like the best was going against the common mindset that "there's nothing living in that water".

My favorite spot to fly fish is Labrador Canada. Particularly Anne Marie owned by the Coopers. You don’t always get a lot of fish but I took Brookies that averaged 6.2 pounds all on dry flies.

Sorry, forgot some photos

Yates Mill Pond, Raleigh,NC. Crappie,Big mouth. Don't catch a lot but meet a lot of interesting people who come to see the working mill. Met a young couple from Melbourne, Australia just last week. He is in a military exchange program and they are expecting their first. All in a 5 minute conversation.