a little variety

Hi Folks, Spent the afternoon into dark yesterday with a guest casting flies from the canoe.  Water temperature is starting to cool off with a surface temperature on the lake of 68 degrees.  No Much to contend with though it is supposed to pick up from the south this afternoon and get a bit breezy as a big weather front pushes through.  We cast poppers the entire afternoon and in yellow and chartreuse.  Even tried a few foam slider flies.  We worked for the smallmouth we caught.  Lots of little fish looking at the flies.  However. in the mean time we were treated to a fair amount violent strikes from pickerel.  Pretty interesting how the pickerel absolutely crush the popper but miss the fly altogether.
we had several break offs where we would see our fly floating after the take with an inch or two of line still attached to the fly.  Lucky for us and lucky for the pickerel.  We did land several of these slimy bastards and they are good fun on a fly, just not the the target species.  Also, we caught a lot of yellow perch and some trophy pumpkin seeds.  The fish of the night was a 16" 2.5lb smallmouth that had some fight in it.  We missed a couple of good fish at dark as well.  I guess because yesterday was so hot and sunny the fishing did not turn on until dark.  We covered a bit of water and we found smallmouth holding off deeper edges that had big submerged rocks and weed beds.  With the cool down on the way I will be getting back on the trout water.  Remember to clean your gear and keep the non-native species at home.  Have Fun, Willy