Spring Pan Fish 2014 - Heating Up

As the spring chill has turned into more hot and humid days I have been thankful to see the rise in pan fish activity and spawning. Yesterday I spent a few hours in the afternoon fishing a local pond for blue gill, pumpkin seed and crappie. I met a friend and his family while on the water and enjoyed a nice laid back day of catching scrappy fish and light conversation.

The bite was on and within a few hours plenty of fish were brought to shore. Of course I started out with my blue gill slaying pattern the bead head mirage back scud and had plenty of decent fish on in no time. My buddy who was using spinning tackle put one of my patterns on under a float and had great success as well, dare I say more then I had partially I believe due to being able to suspend the fly above the weeds and right in the zone.

I left the pond to go have dinner at my parents and on the way home stopped back in for more action. As the night progressed the crappie bite started and I was able to land plenty of feisty average size fish. They keyed in on the retrieve more then the pattern, as long as the fly was retrieved with long strips and a pause they were all over it. I switched over to an epoxy minnow towards the end of the evening and had a fish on almost every cast. At 9:45 when I was having trouble seeing and the bugs started to feast upon my flesh I choose to call it a night. I took a few pictures just to share here, at this point I have caught so many thousands of pan fish that I normally only take pictures of ones that are larger then normal, or that have interesting markings.

Hot Patterns Today

Bead Head Mirage Back Scud

Bead Head PheasantTail Soft Hackle

Parachute Dry Flies

Epoxy Minnow - This pattern and the picture below is that of Ian Collin James, you can find a step by step tying guide here:  http://www3.sympatico.ca/ianjames/fly-tying.html