Fly Fishing for Panfish Saturday
May 24, 2011
Well, I finally was able to get out for my first fly fishing outing of the year so far. I went to Lake Arlington in Arlington Heights for about an hour to have some fun battling the bream.
I started out with a yellow foam beetle, and immediately hooked up on my first cast. Through trial and error, I've found that the best way to fish these foam beetles is like a bass bug with short erratic strips. If I casted and let it sit there, no one seemed interested.
Later I tried out some size 16 scud like nymphs, the fish were definitely interested but kept missing the fly as I was stripping it. This fly worked much better as a dropper last year so maybe the fish just like seeing a nymph suspended in the water more. I ended up spending the last 10 minutes going for bass with a wooly bugger but to no avail.
All in all it was a really fun trip for me, I caught about 15 nice-sized bluegill and came to the conclusion that my scud works much better as a dropper than by itself. I love fly fishing for panfish because you can most always expect a hot bite.
I started out with a yellow foam beetle, and immediately hooked up on my first cast. Through trial and error, I've found that the best way to fish these foam beetles is like a bass bug with short erratic strips. If I casted and let it sit there, no one seemed interested.
Later I tried out some size 16 scud like nymphs, the fish were definitely interested but kept missing the fly as I was stripping it. This fly worked much better as a dropper last year so maybe the fish just like seeing a nymph suspended in the water more. I ended up spending the last 10 minutes going for bass with a wooly bugger but to no avail.
All in all it was a really fun trip for me, I caught about 15 nice-sized bluegill and came to the conclusion that my scud works much better as a dropper than by itself. I love fly fishing for panfish because you can most always expect a hot bite.
Posted by StephenJS.