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sthrncomfort

Year of the Bluegill

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After a fairly successful 2012 fishing season that included a lot of firsts, including my introduction to fly fishing, I've stumbled upon a great outlet for my fishing habit.

 

After reading an article on The Fiberglass Manifesto (http://www.thefiberglassmanifesto.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-year-of-bluegill.html) and seeing a few pictures tagged in support, I decided to join in on the fun and make an effort to target Bluegill for 2013.

 

I'm only a couple of weeks in, and I am hooked.

 

Each trip out (which has become a daily habit) has netted me a minimum of 3 fish in a short span.

 

What I have found most interesting in my current quest is the variety of coloration the Bluegill contain. From dark purples to bright greens, the combinations have proved endless so far.

 

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It seems that through my quests to catch the biggest and fastest fish in the seas, I forgot the simple things in life like catching a handful of Bluegill at the end of a hard day at work.

 

Give it a shot one day on the way home from work (with the ladies approval of course) and you'll feel the stress of a hard day's work fade away on that first cast.

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Tie up some sz 14's in Black, all Black with a beadhead or a splitshot, they Love Em. I catch em 12-14" here in Lake Austin all day long, Great Little Fighters, Especially on a 2 or 3 wt smile.png

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The closest Trout stream I fish is 5 hours away, so I spend a lot of time annoying Bluegills locally. Same gear, many of the same fly patterns. Try to find a book called "Bluegill....Fly Fishing & Flies" by Terry and Roxanne Wilson. More good info on fly fishing for Bluegills than you'll find anywhere.

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Bluegill rule! If it wasn't for their willingness to bite anything, I'd likely still be spin fishing ponds, with little success! Like Chase Creek, trout waters are too far for me (even 1/2 hour drive is too far) so ponds get most of my attention.

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Bluegill are what made me try out fly fishing. I had gotten really into ultra light spincasting for pan fish and spent every moment I could at a local pond chasing them. I would have a bad day, not get into any fish and then a fly fisherman would show up and start picking them off one by one. I figured there had to be something to it and started my quest into fly fishing to try and catch more fish. It has been a downhill slide for my bank account ever since, especially when I came to the conclusion that it would be cheaper to tie my own flies then to buy them(hahaha was I sadly mistaken).

 

I agree that there is nothing like hitting the pond on the way home from work. Many nights after 5-10 minutes of fishing I would forget that I had actually worked at all that day. I got into between 800-900 pan fish on the fly rod last season...I am sure this year will be just as good:

 

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Sans the hot sauce ... but they are a great meal when you have ten or thirty 3-bite sized fillets.

I've rarely been in the same state as a trout stream, so sunfish and bass are my target species ... and bass will hit breams flies so I am usually fishing with those.

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There's still a lot of kid in all of us and the gang of superannuated bluegill chasers I see every year is the proof. I admit to loving it, especially in spring.

 

Two 'secrets'.

 

1. Scale down your gear. I have an Orvis 2 wt for the panfish work and will never go heavier again.

 

2. KISS works great -- a # 10 silver mylar body with a sparse white bucktail wing is all you really need. ( And some bruisers may crash the party -- like big crappy and walleyes after the early of the year minnows.

 

3. But MICK ( Make it complicated) is also a kick. My favorite spring pattern is yet another totally superfluous green caddis larva nymph made of green and black segments of spun deer hair over a lightly weighted scud-type hook in size 10 or 12. You may need a good hook disgorger as they swallow this one deep.

 

Rocco

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Mikechell,

 

PM me your email address and I'll send you a picture, I can't post picts here.

 

Rocco

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Bluegills are a guilty pleasure. I'm lucky to have great trout streams within an hour from where I live, but sometimes I just go to a local lake and have some fun.

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One of my favorite tying kicks is making new patterns for bluegills. This one I tested on a warm day in January a few weeks back and it killed:

 

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It's pretty simple, most folks will have the materials. A little flash for the tail, chartreuse chenille for the body, some rubber legs, black dubbing, and a bead head. I try to make my bluegill patterns with this mindset: attract them, make them eat, but the fly needs to be bullet-proof. I swear, gills will destroy trout flies at twice the rate of trout. KISS is a great philosophy. My favorite fishing time of the year, and hopefully I don't get the ethics police jumping down my throat for this, is when the big gills and sunfish come shallow to spawn. I can wade the edges of a local lake here in Ohio and have hours of 3wt-bending fun when they come shallow like that.

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I like the foam hoppers, light green and yellow. In my kayak I almost always have a secondary rod rigged with a hopper, if its a slow day for bass or I just need to take a little break from casting and stripping i will float along the bank and toss a hopper along the edges, Sometimes I just let it get hammered by the little guys that cant even fit it in their mouth.

 

But there is always a surprise too, was floating down river, eating a sammich while messing around with a hopper, had a 14" bass nail it.

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Cream I am with you on the gills when they are tending a bed them big boys get down right vicious one of my favorite gill patterns is a mini buggar in olive with a black bead head just pull it to the edge of their beds and I swear them big guys will attack it like they are a 6 foot baracuda chasing a wounded chicken

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