Catching Panfish
Fishing for panfish such as crappie, bluegill, and other sunfish may be the best way to get started fly fishing. (In the south, sunfish are often called bream.) There are many farm ponds, municipal lakes, and other stillwaters around the country full to the brim with panfish. Panfish are easy to access, and they are often close to home.At the Fly Fisherman magazine office, we have a small pond that holds storm water from local streets and parking lots. This pond is a 100-yard walk out the back door, and we often fish for panfish and small bass there at lunch or after work. There are thousands of these little places in suburbs all over America.Panfish adapt to almost any urban, agricultural, or wilderness environment, and propagate themselves to the point where in some places there are too many of them to grow to their maximum potential. As an added bonus, in many panfish waters there are likely to be larger warmwater predators such as largemouth, smallmouth, white, or striped bass; pike, carp, pickerel, and catfish.Panfish eat many of the same foods as trout (see “What Trout Eat” on page 36). Some species of mayflies, caddisflies, and midges live in the warmer waters where panfish thrive, but they are often not as prolific, and you probably won’t see a massive hatch of one insect that makes the surface of the water boil with fish.Instead, panfish in most stillwaters tend to feed opportunistically on aquatic insects and other organisms such as damselfly nymphs, snails, dragonflies, and terrestrial foods that fall into the water such as beetles and ants.Because panfish feed on a variety of foods, it’s often best to arouse their curiosity with small attractor-type surface flies called poppers. Remember that panfish have small mouths, and small flies are generally better than large ones intended for bass. Use your regular trout outfit—hopefully a 4- or 5-weight rod with a floating line. Tie a #8-12 red, yellow, or black rubber-leg popper to a 9-foot knotless leader tapered to 3X tippet.Locate the fish and cast your fly nearby. Don’t worry if your fly lands with a splat. A heavy landing usually spooks trout but often excites and attracts bass and panfish.After the splat, pause and wait several seconds for a fish. Hold the rod tip low to the water, put the line under the index finger of your rod hand and with your line hand, pull the line through your pinched finger. This is called “stripping” the line. Sometimes while fly fishing you want to strip line continuously, but with popper fishing you want to “pop” the fly, let it rest, then chug it again. You’ll find that if you let the fly sit motionless too long, fish lose interest. If you pop it too frequently or too quickly you won’t get as many fish either. Experiment with different retrieves to find out what is working.Sometimes panfish come to investigate the popper but won’t take it—or can’t seem to get their mouths around it. In this instance, you can switch to a smaller popper, or use an improved clinch knot to tie a 12- to 18-inch piece of monofilament to the bend of the popper hook. (The same way you would attach tippet to a hook eye.)At the end of this piece of monofilament, attach a small #12-16 mayfly nymph or midge imitation such as a Brassie and use the same popper technique. The popper attracts the fish, but they end up eating the smaller nymph.
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