Fishing for pan fish was the thing that ultimately pushed me over to fly fishing and after a few hundred hours targeting the same fish I have been focused on for years while spin casting I have come to some realizations. I spend most of my time fishing for these little fierce fighters on the same pond, targeting the chunky bluegill, spunky pumpkin seed's, and colorful crappie that I love so much. This has allowed me to really tune into this body of water and focus on the mood and feeding habits of these fish. I have been using a formula last season that allowed me most days to get onto what the fish wanted within the first 30 minutes of fishing. Before I go into any more details I will just say that these are methods that have worked for me and may not work for everyone on every body of water. However I think that by trying these methods and ideas you may find that they work for you where you fish. The methods have been broken down a bit below:
Arrival - Upon arrival to the pond while rigging things up I usually take a step back and observe the water. I am looking for signs of fish in the shallow bay, were they are holding, are they taking insects and bugs off the surface, are they hunkering down deeper? Water temperature/clarity and weather conditions are also things to take into consideration. Polarized sunglasses are perhaps my most valued piece of equipment while fishing for gills, being able to see what the fish are doing and where they are holding is priceless.
First Fly - The first fly I select to fish with is usually something more natural and buggy. PT( Pheasant Tail) nymphs, hares ears, scuds, worms, bead head soft hackles and buggy flies in the more natural colors. Greys, olives, browns, and tans are the colors I start with first. As far as hook/fly size goes I will begin in the 12-16 range as this seems to be a good place to start. If I start to get some followers that are hesitant to take I will usually downsize a bit, most of the time the sweet spot seems to be a size 14. The most deadly fly I have found on this body of water is a size 14 bead head mirage back scud. Be it dead drifted, allowed to sink, jigged, stripped or pulled in steadily it always seems to produce fish under all but the harshest conditions. The first night trying out my new custom built 2 wt rod I put over 100 fish on this fly in the course of a few hours. If after 10 minutes I have had no followers, no takes, nips or action I will move away from the natural flies and onto my second selection.
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| Stocking up the boxes with natural colored flies. |
Bead Head Mirage Back Scud
Materials
Hook: Size 14 Scud Hook
Head: 3/32nd Brass Bead
Rib: Small Copper Wire
Shell Back: Opal Mirage Tinsel (Medium or Large)
Body: Custom Scud Dubbing (Made from Australian possum, brown, grey, orange antron fibers and a pinch or two of rust ice dub)
Above is the Bead Head Mirage Back Scud. A simple scud pattern I tied up initially for trout, I was looking for a quick and easy pattern that would be as effective as some of the more labor intensive scud patterns with shell backs using nymph skin or scud back. You can pump out a dozen of these flies fairly quickly and with minimal materials. For the dubbing I use a custom dubbing blend mixed in a coffee grinder, but any buggy nymph dubbing or scud dubbing will do the trick. I will be posting a step by step in the future along with many other productive gill patterns. I never leave home without them when targeting trout or gills.
Second Fly - If the natural approach has not produced for me after 10 or so minutes I will then switch over to flies that are brighter, colorful and that have more movement usually in sizes 8-14. Here I will start off with wooly worms, panfish buggers, wee willie wigglers, scuds or nymphs in bright colors with rubber legs and buggy dubbing. Sometimes it seems again at least in this pond that the fish want something a little brighter, a little more flashy, a little something extra to catch their attention. I will vary retrieves as well with any fly as mentioned above, from dead drift, letting it sink slowly, jigging it above or around weeds, stripping it back, or even swimming it fast and steady back to shore. Colors I will use are usually focused around chartreuse, pinks, purples, greens and florescent colors.
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| Pan Fish Bugger |
Above is a pan fish bugger pattern that I found from a video on You Tube . The rubber leg tail is very tantalizing to the fish and is often enough to entice them to strike voraciously. I use them both in natural colors as well as bright eye catching colors to cover all my bases. These are tied on size 10 2X long nymph hooks with red brass beads.
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| Fly Fish Foods La Bomba |
The La Bomba bluegill fly created by Cheech from the Fly Fish Food blog is a great fly to weed out some of the smaller fish. I find that when the gills want this fly it is usually the chunkier ones and they hammer it. The ones I have tied above are a slight variation on the pattern tied on size 10 barbless streamer hooks. I did not have the exact materials listed on the FFF blog so I improvised a bit and created a slight variation on the pattern, but I can assure you it does not change how deadly effective this fly can be.
Top Water - If I see lots of action along the shallow bay, fish splashing at and taking insects off the top I know that it will be a productive day/night for fishing dry flies and poppers. Sometimes if you know fish are around but they are not showing any action on the surface it still may not be a bad idea to toss a few dry flies or poppers out. Small foam/wood poppers in sizes 8-14 work great, and the larger sizes also give you a good chance to land some bass. Personally I prefer small elk hair caddis, humpys ,parachute style dry flies, griffiths gnat style flies in bright flashy colors, and even heavily hackled wet flies that will stay afloat if let down softly on the water. Anything with a buggy profile small or large seems to attract gills from far and wide. The dry fly action on many bass and bluegill ponds can be exhilarating . Most of the time all you need to do is cast the fly into calm glass like water and wait for a taker to come and smash the fly. When the fish are taking things off the top they do not seem to be to picky about what they try to inhale.
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| Humpy |
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| CDC Elk Hair Caddis |
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| Parachute style dry fly |
In all but the toughest situations this simple formula above puts me into fish. Now some people will go on to say that blue gill are indiscriminate eaters, that they will eat just about any offering you can throw at them at anytime. This can seem to be true at certain times, but at other times I have found that these fish can be really picky, not wanting a fly with a bead head, not wanting natural colored small buggy flies or perhaps large flashy colorful flies. More then anything what I am trying to convey with this article is pan fish can be very picky eaters, especially if you are after some of the bulls and trophy fish. Give the methods and ideas I have posted here a shot, perhaps they will give you some success on your home waters.
Expect a few more articles in the near future that go into a bit more detail on topics such as retrieve, hunting for bigger gills and crappie, and material selection for tying bluegill flies.
Tight Lines!
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