Community Fishing Pond Series

Daily fishing opportunities in the valley can be sparse. Luckily, there are constructed community fishing lakes to fish in between weekend trips. These ponds don't fish great, so hitting them at the right time is essential to catching fish. These ponds get hot easily, they have a concrete base that retains heat. So fishing them in the summer months isn't recommended, but spring and fall can produce nice fish.

Because they are easily accessible to the game and fish department, the local ponds are seasonally stocked with a variety of game species. Every spring, largemouth are stocked at sub quality length, channel catfish are stocked biweekly in the fall months starting in October, and rainbow trout are stocked biweekly in the winter.

Over the course of this fall/winter season I am going to fish all of the community fishing lakes in the Phoenix metro area. Posting my success and failures along the way in hopes of providing some direction and purpose to how I fish these lakes in the future. I'll be tackling these ponds with a sparse amount of gear. I essentially have two rods that could theoretically fit for bass fishing, an 8 wt Redington Vice fly rod and a 4 wt MaxCatch fly rod.

The 8 weight is great for throwing big streamers and heavy flies that need to fish in deeper water. On this rod I have the Redington Crosswater reel with matching weight Rio Predator fly line. This fly line will allow me to fish in 8-10 feet of water with the right fly, ideal for lentic (stillwater) conditions. And on the days topwater is working I won't have to change out spools for different line.

The MaxCatch is the first fly rod I ever got, so it has a soft spot in my heart. I like to use it for smaller streamer patterns (Clouser Minnows and Wooly Buggers). I prefer this rod in lotic (fast-moving water) conditions when I can let a clouser drift down a deep run before stripping it back upstream, but in the case when I need more finesse at the community ponds, I'll opt for this rig.

I imagine winter and early spring will be the best time to hit these waters for largemouth bass.