Fishing is kind of the reason why we do a lot of the things that we do, isn’t it? I know my priorities have changed a lot as I have gotten married and we have had three kids, but fly fishing still holds a very special spot in my heart. I now find it much more complicated to escape for full day trips or multi-day trips, unless I’ve gotten everything checked off the “honey-do” list well in advance. I find it much easier to escape life for an hour here or there and go hit an urban stream or pond than it is to drive hours to get on the water. These short trips help break up the monotony of daily life AND help scratch the itch to get on the water.
I’ve come to find that when I am chasing fish in an urban setting that my experiences are very different than what I generally did as a kid in the mountains. Fishing within eyesight of a major interstate, hearing semi trucks and overly tuned Honda’s is a very different feeling that hearing nothing beyond the wind in the trees and the water rushing around the rocks. That’s part of what makes it fun. It is a completely different experience.
Another reason why it is fun is that, at least around here, I never know what I am going to find while urban fishing. I was at a urban spot chasing carp with a friend and he hooked into a unexpected (and larger than normal) white bass. Some of these urban bodies of water have everything from brown trout to goldfish, from carp to shopping carts (beware of hooking into shopping carts), from bluegill to largemouth bass. I’ve been at places within ten minutes of work where people are catching everything from tiger trout (which was a surprise) to catfish. The surprise of never knowing what could end up on my line is kind of enjoyable.
That takes me to the next part of what makes targeting these fish in an urban setting is the challenge of figuring out various bodies of water. One of my local ponds I’ve started changing my approach as I have started figuring different things out. I’ve gone from almost exclusively throwing a 3wt for bluegill and green sunfish to starting to take my 5wt rod out to throw streamers for bass and take my 8wt to target some of the newly found carp. It’s a fun challenge to figure out what the next opportunity is going to be on any given body of water.
Another fun part of chasing fish in urban environments is the thrill of discovery. I have spent plenty of quick trips during lunch breaks or right before/after work swinging by a new pond or blue line on showing up on my phones map. More often than not the exploration leads me to mark “No Fish” or “No Fishing Allowed” but every once in a while I find a new stretch of water that holds fish that I can try and catch. These little gems have had me catch carp, white bass, trout, bluegill, and green sunfish – with more species to come I’m certain. As we probably can agree – catching a fish is better than not catching a fish.
I am still learning and growing when it comes to learning and understanding fishing urban waters — I believe I will keep learning more about these waters until the day I can no longer fish — but I would like to share a couple of thoughts and suggestions that I have found to be helpful in chasing urban fish.
Those are some quick pointers into the urban fishing game! I hope that you can be a little adventurous and try out some urban fishing opportunities. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to follow me on Instagram @spenceronthefly to see some of my urban fishing exploits.