Urban Exploration

by JJ
(Upstate SC)

I am a thin blue line guy at heart. However, sometimes it’s just not practical, or possible to get to these little mountain streams. It’s about a 45 min. drive to my nearest trout area, and up to 2 hours for a lot of it. When I just can’t dedicate the travel time it takes, I look closer to home.

I live in a rapidly growing part of the country. I won’t go into why it’s growing so fast, but one of the results of that growth is retention ponds. Built to mitigate the loss of permeable surfaces, they are an increasing feature in this area. As Chris mentioned in a previous post, many of these ponds hold bass and sunfish. I decided last summer to explore some of these ponds, as well as some urban creeks in my area.

When you are the sort of person who mainly fishes headwater streams, where things are clean and quiet, urban fishing provides a.......let’s call it different, perspective. Although dirty, and polluted from run-off, I have been surprised to find a diversity of sunfish species, and spotted bass in a creek that drains the heart of the city. The retention ponds also somehow support bass and sunfish. I’m not sure if their presence is the result of man or not, but they are in there. The ponds also provide a great “close to home” testing grounds for new gear/lures.

I have a five foot Tenryu Rayz that I got from Chris last year as my main small stream trout rod. I enjoy using that rod so much that I am currently using it to explore these ponds as well. So far, it has handled the one to two pound bass without leaving me feeling under gunned - a use that I didn’t have in mind when I made that purchase.

So, if life gets hectic and interrupts your plans to fish far flung places, look closer to home. The fish are there!