Home Forums Fishing Flyfishing Anyone do any fly fishing for pan fish...especially bluegills...

When we travel, I enjoy fly fishing for nice bluegill..and eating them even more..but it seems most go after them with the worm and bobber..not bad, but the fly rod is sooooooo much fun..anyone enjoy this also...??

Absolutely. I've caught Panfish from California to Maine, Georgia to Minnesota. Bluegill, Redear, Green Sunfish, Rock Bass, Longear, Pumpkinseed, Yellow Perch. With the exception of Rock Bass which were taken on Rapalas and small jigs, I've caught representatives of each on flies.

My current 'gill rod of choice is an Echo Carbon 2wt, though I'm also trying out a Cabela's Classic Glass 4 wt ($69.95 !!) and a Granger 7030.

I find foam rubber spiders to be the most fun, though not necessarily the most effective. Tough to beat a small bugger when it comes to blending quantity and quality. For pure numbers to hand, disregarding size, I'm letting James use a size 14 Partridge and Olive soft hackle. The Elk Hair Caddis that Rob P tied for the swap last year was also a bluegill killah. Heck, that one fly probably caught close to 100 fish for me. Bluegill in CA and CO, and Rainbow and Brown trout in CO. Damn me for leaving it on my drying patch and losing it.

Scott

It's amazing how one fly can catch so much. I admit that most of the flies I have, only four boxes full, will probably never be seen by a fish. Those few that are known to work, get the fish. They get tied on first and that's as far as it needs to go most of the time. If I do change flies, it's usually to a smaller one more often than a different pattern.
Pan fish are a ball with flies. Heck, I can remember walking along the face of a rock dam highway crossing at San Luis Res. and just knocking the big pan fish dead. All I did was jig a fly in the gaps between the big boulders and the fight was on. They apparently would hide in the rocks to avoid the Stripers that try to get them. E

You bet, it's a blast. Most any small attractor wet fly will work.
I especially like flies with yellow and red. Small size 12 - 16 buggers work too. I like a variation I learned in San Diego called a Super Bug which only uses a turn or two of hackle at the front.

PS not technically fly fishing but I like to use a Pistol Pete (small woolly worm with a propeller on the front) with a spinning outfit with a fly and bubble set up too.

THE killer rig is a popper or spider on top with a nymph or wet fly on a 12" dropper below. Just leave an extra long tag end when you tie the popper on and add the nymph to the tag end.

Used a black ant and hemostats for about 2 hours last weekend. Caught enough to feed the entire cast from a Tarzan movie.

When I was stationed in NC we had a 3 acre lake (pond) behind the house full of bluegills and bass. Loved catching the bluegills on the flyrod. My best catch was a 3 incher that went ballistic when I set the hook ... that's because he was being pursued by an 8 lb largemouth. That bass swallowed that bluegill and wouldn't let go. When I finally got him in I opened the mouth and pulled the bluegill from his gut ... the bass was never hooked. Poor little bluegill didn't fare so well.

My farm pond has a healthy population of bass, crappies, and a couple of varities of bluegill. When the Bass fishing is slow I use my 5 wght. and a 5x tippit with a small wooly bugger. Usually black with a red butt. Sometimes a gold bead. It is as much fun as one should be allowed to have.

Dry flies like a coachman, rio grande, or white miller work well too if you like fish with a dry fly.

If any of you are in Georgia, give the lake at Calloway Gardens a try. It is located near Pine Mountain, GA. I try to make at least one trip a year.

The bluegill fishing is the most fantastic I have ever seen. They were so large, I had to lip them like I do bass, to get the hook out. They were too large to hold by the body in my hand.

I have found that a Chartreuse pan fish popper works best, but flies might work as good. Black and yellow stripes are good, too.

Oh yeah! Bluegill, yellow perch, crappie, and of course I find bass in the same waters.

So much fun on a fly rod!

Someone once said ( I can't remember who) that if bluegills weighed 10 pounds nobody would fish for anything else. I find them to be a damn fine game fish.

They are a great fly rod fish. Excellent eating as well.

I've used the Wooly Bully Spider to great success at Utah's Pelican Lake. My best color was florescent red with white legs. The fly is really fun if the water is clear enough you can see to the bottom. You can watch the bluegills materialize out of the tules, hover with fins a quiver and then suck in the fly. Great sport.

A couple nights ago. Granger 7030 wielded by big bro, yellow foam spider, 8" Redear.

Way cool, Scott ! E

They were my first fly caught fish as a kid back in Tenn and Va. Not so much since I moved to Oregon. Used to favor poppers. Now when I visit my sister back east I tend to black wooly buggers and gold ribbed hare's ears. Great fish and good starters for kids.

1min

Thanks for reminding me. A bluegill about 4" long was my first fly caught fish. A fisherman I met as a kid at a local park lake told me you could catch fish with small flies. I bought a couple of bright wet flies from a drug store and flipped them out with my spinning rod and reel. Could only "cast" at few feet. I tossed the fly next to some vegetation along the bank and as the fly was sinking like a little parachute this bluegill came up under it and took it. One of my most unforgettable fishing experiences.

I learned to fly fish catching bluegills! A gray wooly worm size 10 will catch them everytime easily. Poppers are a great time as well. I don't find many big bluegills 4-6 inches are common where I fish. I did manage to catch a "huge" bluegill one day while fishing several years back. I was using a streamer fly looking for crappie and a bluegill hit it. I thought I hooked a 15 inch bass but ended up a bluegill bigger than my hand swallowed that streamer. That was the biggest bluegill I ever caught and still remember it to this day. Panfishing with a flyrod is great fun!

My first fish on fly were blue gills and I still enjoy catching them on fly. The big bluegills are much more difficult than a trout to catch

The Shenendoah and Potomac Rivers had great fishing for BIG sunfish in it.

Boy did they fight on a 4 wt/ Prince nymphs and McGintys, Foam spiders

Plenty of crappie and bass in the area so take advantage in the Spring during the pre spawn

great pic

How do you tie a foam spider.? (materials)size of hook . My favorite fly is a black gnat on a 16 hook. I caught a 5 Lb large mouth bass on one in the early spring. I was fishing for trout, he had nothing in his stomach. so his first bite of food in the spring was his last. took me 20 min to net him 0n a 1 1/2 lb tipped leader. what fun that was.

Hubert,

Wapsi makes foam bodies, and heck, apparently even has an instruction page:

http://www.wapsifly.com/pfk03.html

And since I bought some yellow spiders at Lund's in WI, I knew there had to be a source for colors other than black and white:
http://www.flymasters.com/ShopDetail.asp?d=44&i=274

I will say, that since I first posted here, I've been working with bluegill sized hair poppers. My ability with spun/stacked hair is lacking, so this is a way to improve. Results have been encouraging. However, while the days here are still in the 70s-90s, the nights are cooling off. We're still getting a little surface action from the bluegill, but not for much longer. Time to get back to the rivers after trout.

Your 5 lber beats my latest significant bycatch: a 2 lb LMB caught on a #16 partridge and orange about 10 days ago. I cheated though, as it was on 5X tippet I was leery of putting a set in the Granger, but it came out unscathed. The ironic thing, is that I've been throwing all sorts of big stuff on an 8wt. I've been hoping to get a good sized bass on the fly this year, to no avail.

Good luck,
Scott

before that incident I never even thought about Bass on flies. that changed my ways I have caught a few 1 to 2 lbs, I thought I had hooked onto the worlds biggest trout. about halfway through the fight he broke water and then I knew I was in trouble. I never dreamed I could land him , all I did then is kept the pressure on him only about a 1Lb. I really got excited when he began to tire out.I took him home and ate him. I was still in the army and the meat was a welcome sight. we ate a lot of fish back then.

Love it.

(Warning - spinning gear shown below )

I can't believe the mild weather this year, and the way it's kept the fish easily accessible to a fly rod. Either that, or the fish have always been there in November, but I'd given up fishing for them. We're still hooking good sized fish, on nymphs/wets in the shallows. Last week it was 10 good fish for 11 casts, but only because on the tenth cast I missed one.

James is more and more starting to get the hang of actually working with a fly rod. I still need to do some coaching - rod tip down when stripping, keep tension on the fish... Realistically though, it's about the same as what I have to do with his mom

Last Friday was "PJs" day at his school, and we stopped by the pond on the way home to see if we could give some fish a little bit of jaw pain. The Redear is all his, I hooked the bass and handed him the rod.






Life is good, even if the trip down the American on Saturday was just a boat ride with the boys. There were no salmon rolling on the stretch of river we were floating, and we only saw 5 really ragged ones swimming in the shallows in some frog water. Next Saturday, we're floating the Yuba.

A rubber worm! My eyes, my eyes, I'm going blind!

Regardless, it's great that you have him out there and into fish. Treasure and retain those pics, as the first 20 years of my fishing experiences are only reflections in the memory banks. If the camera will do it, get in really close on some of those fish.

I have been wondering for several years who the authority was that declared PJ's acceptable day ware. Now I know we have the schools to blame.

Tight lines,

I love it in the late summer on our lake.

WyoCoyoteHunter---you bet I do, totally love it and the ice out spawn time crappies is my fav thing to work on a fly rod.

Not sure where you live in Wyo but if the Tongue River Res isn't too far off you might venture that way this spring and give it a go. If the timing was right and I could break away I'd meet you over there for a couple of days.

I find wets to work better than dry's though have caught more than a few on dry's. A small beaded hairs ear works best for me for sunnies and bluegills.

For crappies I like some bigger wets, and a good part of that reason so I have a chance to keep the fly in the crappie zone and not be bothered so much by the sunnies etc. (this is just for ice out and spawn times)

Great fun and a great way to intro newbies to fly fishing as they'll get so much action.

Dober

Pretty much my main fly rod quarry. As they say if bluegill got to 5 lbs you couldn't land one.

Way of life down here in Dixie.

While I got lucky and picked up a couple in March, it's warming up nicely, and the fish are on the edges and starting to eat foam spiders.

Boys:






Speygill. Poor little thing really shouldn't have hit the fly I had tied on while doing some casting practice:

Bluegills should be on the beds on the Tennessee River about now. About time to take the kids and the canoe out for fishing. Catching a couple dozen hand sized bluegill on a popping bug is a ton of fun whether you are 8 or 80.

Will be headed to Wheeler Lake on the Tenn Friday to get after the bream and catfish...,

The 'gills are bedding in heavy force right now which is about a week early here in Michigan. I've been at them the last few days with the Sage TXL 0wt.





16 gills on one grizzly adam #16...

You folks still catching bluegills and bass???? Never had a chance to catch a bluegill this spring as we didn't travel to Mich. to visit.. Was in NE Montana, and maybe should have looked into it there.. The rest of the summer will be in Wy. and Mt. so I will have to be satisfied with catching these lousy trout.. Sure miss those bluegills.. May get a chance at bass on our way north next week.. Hope you are catching a boat load...

Last Thursday:




Apparently the bluegill are always out there to be caught in November, I just didn't know it. That's the Cabela's CGR rod I mentioned in my first post. No longer available, it is now my "go to" bluegill and small stream trout rod.

For those of you that were in the swap in 2011, that's the James' fly in action. I tell you, that glass bead bugger just hovers, unlike a brass bead, and has that little something extra that a plain bugger can't compete with.

When I lived in Baker,Or. used to fish Brownlee pool on the Snake and the Powder river arm. I don't know what it's like now but there used to be large schools of Crappie, large yellow Perch, Bluegills, Sunfish, etc.. Usually took second place to Smallmouths and Rainbow Trout early and late in the year.

A couple of times caught Smallies on small flies fishing for crappie. Did catch a rather large yellow perch on a fly....quite a bit of fun. Didn't use anything exotic, just flies from the local sporting goods store. I knew of one gent who caught a small Channel Cat on a sinking fly....still had spots.

I Love to get out my little Sage 2-Weight Fly Rod & get after them in our stock tanks. I like to use tiny top water poppers or the real small foam grasshoppers.