Bream/panfish patterns?

[FlaFly 0]

Tidey

I know that BGs eat mostly chironomid larve and other nymphs, etc., ... just never tried one. Tell me, was your nymph a bead-head, or wound with lead/copper/whatever?

 

Blue eye guy, sorry to hijack your thread.

[tidewaterfly 0]

No weight at all.

[mikechell 0]

Tidey

I know that BGs eat mostly chironomid larve and other nymphs, etc., ... just never tried one. Tell me, was your nymph a bead-head, or wound with lead/copper/whatever?

 

Blue eye guy, sorry to hijack your thread.

 

 

No weight at all.

Agreed. Florida waters are rarely "deep". And most of the Sunfish family are more than eager to rise up to prey. They will pick up off the bottom, too ... if it gets there.

I have some nymph/midge larva patterns with bead heads ... but I think those will be fished mostly on clear sand bottomed lakes. Most of my fishing with sinking flies is done with as little weight as possible.

[Stippled Popper 0]

Here is a popular fly in the Mississippi River Delta, the Jitterbee tied on an #10 or #8 Eagle Claw #80. It has a Gold Bead Head(doesn't tarnish) available on the cheap at Hobby Lobby. The most popular colors are Chartreuse/Black, Orange/Black, and Red/Black. The fly is usually fished under a Vertically Oriented Strike Indicator or VOSI which is a blatantly transparent attempt to hide the disgraceful fact you are using a float like a common worm fisherman.

 

It can be very effective in the Spring when the Bluegill are starting to gather to make their beds.

 

 

 

[FlaFly 0]

This is the EZ nymph from flyanglersonline. What do you guys think of this one as a starter for Blue eye and me?

[tidewaterfly 0]

FlaFly, that one should be as good as any to get started with. I would call that type fly a soft hackle wet fly, but that's just my opinion. For easy to tie patterns, there's a couple of wet flies I've always liked tying & using called the Brown Hackle Peacock & Grey Hackle Peacock. Although they're not nymphs, both could be taken as nymphs by the fish. I've also tied variations with black hackle & many other hackle colors. There's something about peacock herl that most fish species seem to like and by simply using different hackle the variations are almost endless.

[FlaFly 0]

I see what you mean about calling it a nymph... everything I've read tells me if it has wings, it's a wet fly. Here's another one I really like called a Teeny Nymph. It can be tied with either one or two "underwings" that could be taken as legs my a fish. I've toyed with the idea of tying it with herl instead of wing barbs.

[mikechell 0]

Keep it simple to start ...

 

 

 

 

 

[ditz2 0]

I would agree that your EZ nymph is a soft hackle and it should work fine. Are you fishing still water or moving water. A lot of soft hackles don/t sink very well and are best fished just under the surface. This is especially true in current. I fish mostly in current of different speeds and sometime I need some extra weight to get the fly in to "the zone". I seldom go with more than bead chain eyes however. I some times will even tie a soft hackle with bead chain though it then is probably not an actual soft hackle........For some reason fish seem to like peacock herl and they also seem to like squirrel tail. I don't think one can go wrong with either. At least for warm water.

[FlaFly 0]

Ditz I fish entirely (so far) in FW lakes. In Fla, lakes are shallow, and because the sun is straighter overhead, their bottoms tend to be covered with vegetation, so we wouldn't ever let our fly sink to the bottom, except in rare cases where the bottom is clean sand (springs). And as others have reminded me, since the water is shallow, there's no need to add weight to make it sink faster.

 

I'm thinking of trying both the EZ nymph and the Teeny nymph. The latter contains no hackle... just several barbs from a pheasant feather wrapped around the hook shank. I'm leaning toward the teeny for a first try. I catch bluegills a lot using surface bugs/poppers, but mostly early in the morning, or late afternoon. I've had lots of situations where they've been biting well, only to stop dead around 10am. When the water is warmer during the day (and we're talking Florida here) the fish don't bite at the surface but they haven't disappeared... they must be staying lower in the water where it's cooler. I want to see if I can catch them in mid-day using a nymph, or a small streamer (which I've already tied).

[FlaFly 0]

P.S. I'm also going to try a Bully Spider.

[Rocco 0]

These work OK for me.

 

Mustad 9672 #8, small lead wire overwrapped with green and black deer hair trimmed to larvae shape.

 

Rocco

[Rocco 0]

These work OK for me.

[Blackwater Virgil 0]

Tide, your observation about what was in those fish's stomachs shows you know how to get to the heart of the matter. It's a very simple thing that many of us forget too often. And I'd have to add that maybe 2/3 of what most bluegills eat are nymphs for much of our southern years, too. I learned long ago that folks who fertilize their ponds are just growing microstuff for the insect larvae to feed on, and they feed the fish, and the little fish feed the big fish - the classic food chain, and it all starts from the bottom up, with those little microbugs and algae that feed the stuff the nymphs feed on. Here in the south, weeds can be a problem, and fertilizing also darkens the water so that sunlight won't reach the bottom in most places, which makes fishing easier. There's always weeds in the shallows, though, and those numphs and bugs just LOVE weeds, which is why you generally find feeding fish there. Long ago, someone said, "Fish where the fish are at," and that's still good advice. We just find more where there are lots and lots of bugs in all stages of development.

[TxHCBP 0]

The brown-hackled peacock has already been mentioned, but...

 

I was doing a LOT of fishing on small ponds a while back with the BHP in #10 & #12, and decided one day that I'd mod it just a touch. I added a short (1/4-inch) butt of red bucktail. Couldn't remember ever seeing it before, so I called it the "Red Ass". Couple of days later I found out that name had been taken, so I changed it to "Red Butt". Then I found out it wasn't anything new: someone had already done it (and under that name, too).

 

Well, however disappointed I was that it was NOT an original idea, I WAS happy with its performance: when nothing else worked, the Red Butt ALWAYS kept me from a no-hitter. I've caught a couple of 3-lb black bass, hundreds of bluegills, a catfish, and even a shad. I tie some for near-surface, but most are weighted with some heavy wire (don't know if it's actually lead, but it's close to that weight).