By STEVE GILLILAND
The phone rang early Saturday morning, and on the line was a friend from church inviting me to fish with him that afternoon on a large farm pond out in the sticks in the shadow of Coronado Heights, where he has been part of a lease for years.
We talked about some of his past fishing adventures there and it brought back memories of fishing on our farm pond in Ohio when I was a kid.
The first year we owned that farm, we found a spot in a field that never dried out. Government cost-share money was available back then to help build farm ponds, so after required soil testing and meeting other requirements, a dandy little farm pond was built, and stocked with the prescribed fish combination of that era, largemouth bass and bluegills.
Endless memories were made around that pond, and it reminded me of a farm pond fishing trip Joyce and I took a few years back.
With rods, bait and tackle boxes in hand we clamored down the side of the grassy overgrown dam and onto a roughly built but sturdy dock that put us ten feet out from the bank and four feet above the water. Hooks were baited and cast into the water before us, which rippled slightly with the breeze. That breeze, along with copious amounts of nasty spray, kept the ravenous mosquitoes at bay.
The sun slid slowly behind nearby trees, leaving its beams to dance upon the rippling water and offering reprieve from the heat as it ushered in the cool evening. Barn swallows by the dozens strafed the pond, either scooping insects from the surface, or snagging them on the wing in mid-air. The deep “harumm” of granddaddy bullfrogs echoed back and forth from behind tufts of cattails.
One line was baited with liver and fished on the bottom, while the other rig held a feisty Canadian night crawler suspended beneath a bobber.
After twenty minutes with no action, I climbed the steep grassy bank to the truck to retrieve our ever-present cameras. As my back was turned to open the truck door, Joyce asked “Did you bring the net?” I pondered why she would ask that question when we were fishing in a small farm pond, but when I spun around and saw the pole in her hands bent toward the water like a divining rod, the reason for her question became obvious. I scrambled back down the bank as she hoisted a dandy three-pound channel cat up onto the dock…Welcome to the sport of farm pond fishing!
The agricultural land of central Kansas is dotted with small farm ponds, many out of sight along field drives or in the middle of pastures. Unless a pond is spring-fed, the water in them comes from runoff, so during the dry springs and summers of late, water levels are often low, and some lesser-quality ponds even go dry. The only other down side I can see to fishing farm ponds is the lack of the large variety of fish species found in most Kansas reservoirs.
Typically, farm ponds contain largemouth bass, channel catfish, bluegills and possibly a few crappies and bullheads. Most ponds are on privately owned property, meaning permission to fish there is required. Once permission is granted however, you will often have the whole place to yourself every time you’re there, because fishing pressure on these ponds is often nil.
A boat is not usually needed, although a canoe, or one of the popular small two-person crafts can come in handy to get you out past any weeds or moss growing along the bank. The dock from which we fished was the perfect length to get us out beyond the cattails.
Since farm ponds are always fed either by springs or by run-off water, and since most of them are situated in pastures or otherwise grassy surroundings, the water in them is well-filtered before reaching the pond, making them very clean.
So, if you’re used to big-lake fishing for walleye, crappie, white bass or stripers, if you love the drone of a big outboard motor as it pushes your big boat across a big lake, and if the presence of dozens of other fishermen all around you are an important part of your fishing experience, farm pond fishing may not be your gig.
If, however, you can be happy catching bluegills, channel catfish and largemouth bass from the bank or from a small boat and never see another human being in the process, farm pond fishing may be for you. Sign me up for choice number two! By the way, I declined my friend’s invitation this time because I had this column to write; how ironic!
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Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].