teenagers on their first kiss. Itâs a surprise to bring in a fish thatâs much smaller than the amount of water it displaced when it hit. Bass run bigger but strike much more delicately; often the bug simply disappears as it is sucked below the surface by a hungry bigmouth.
A distinct hierarchy exists among the warm-water game fish and panfish. The pumpkinseed sunfish takes top honors in our well-ordered universe; both of us consider the pumpkinseed to be the golden trout of the sunfish family. Pumpkinseed sunfish are much less common than bluegills in the places we fish, and the vibrant colors of the males during the breeding season must be seen to be appreciated. Male pumpkinseeds in full spawning dress rival even the most colorful denizens of tropical reefs. Bluegills occupy a close second place in the hierarchy. Again the males wear the brightest orange bellies, which is why bluegills are called âsunniesâ in the eastern USA. Light blue highlights darken to cobalt blue or green across the back of the male bluegill. Females are olive green above and yellow below. Thereâs nothing quite like the stout resistance of a bull bluegill on the end of a line, the little fish turning in tight circles as it tries to set the full width of its round body perpendicular to the canoe. Bass, both largemouth and smallmouth, occupy the final place on the podium, and we commonly take fish up to three pounds on our homemade bluegill spiders. Crappies, rock bass, and green sunfish round out our catch for a typical day on the lake. On rare occasions we catch pike or muskies that attack our panfish as weâre bringing them into the canoe.
As in trout fishing, sunken flies can be deadly, but surface flies and bugs are much more fun to fish. I tie our famous bluegill spiders on long-shanked #10 hooks (TMC-200R). The body is a simple prefab foam body sold by many fly shops and mail-order catalogs; green, black, gray, brown, and yellow are all effective. Precut bulk rubber legs are the only other material in the pattern. I prefer white or yellow legs on a gray body, while Teresa routinely outfishes me using a yellow-bodied bug with black legs. In making the bug, we start by lashing two rubber legs lengthwise along the hook, so that one inch extends forward of the eye (antennae) and two or three inches hang off the end of the hook in back. Then the body is lashed to the hook in two places in an attempt to emphasize the three-segmented body plan of dragonflies, damselflies, wasps, bees, and other tasty, crunchable insects that fish commonly eat. Last to go on are two pairs of transverse rubber legs, one pair tied into each body constriction, the legs extending outward an inch or so to either side. These bugs are light, trim, and easy to cast even with a three-weight line, but the rubber legs sticking out in all directions give an impression of much larger bulk and mass when floating on the water. The bluegill spider has the same silhouette, shadow, and surface impression as a bass bug but much less air resistance. We favor largesized bodies and relatively large hooks, since they weed out the troublesome silver dollarâsized panfish in favor of big âbullsâ in the eight-to-eleven-inch class.
For this seasonâs first panfish outing, Teresa chose a small impoundment folded into the grassy uplands that rise sharply south of the Wisconsin River, toward the crest of Military Ridge. During the late 1950s a tall earthen dam was built across the upper reaches of a small trout stream. It flooded two narrow valleys and formed a handsome lake, well protected by ochre sandstone cliffs and tall white pines that whisper in the breeze. Today we question the wisdom of such a sizable alteration in the landscape, but at that time the change was seen as âprogress.â Brown trout can still be found in the stream below the dam, and a very cosmopolitan fish population has grown up in the lake above. Surprisingly, and to my
A distinct hierarchy exists among the warm-water game fish and panfish. The pumpkinseed sunfish takes top honors in our well-ordered universe; both of us consider the pumpkinseed to be the golden trout of the sunfish family. Pumpkinseed sunfish are much less common than bluegills in the places we fish, and the vibrant colors of the males during the breeding season must be seen to be appreciated. Male pumpkinseeds in full spawning dress rival even the most colorful denizens of tropical reefs. Bluegills occupy a close second place in the hierarchy. Again the males wear the brightest orange bellies, which is why bluegills are called âsunniesâ in the eastern USA. Light blue highlights darken to cobalt blue or green across the back of the male bluegill. Females are olive green above and yellow below. Thereâs nothing quite like the stout resistance of a bull bluegill on the end of a line, the little fish turning in tight circles as it tries to set the full width of its round body perpendicular to the canoe. Bass, both largemouth and smallmouth, occupy the final place on the podium, and we commonly take fish up to three pounds on our homemade bluegill spiders. Crappies, rock bass, and green sunfish round out our catch for a typical day on the lake. On rare occasions we catch pike or muskies that attack our panfish as weâre bringing them into the canoe.
As in trout fishing, sunken flies can be deadly, but surface flies and bugs are much more fun to fish. I tie our famous bluegill spiders on long-shanked #10 hooks (TMC-200R). The body is a simple prefab foam body sold by many fly shops and mail-order catalogs; green, black, gray, brown, and yellow are all effective. Precut bulk rubber legs are the only other material in the pattern. I prefer white or yellow legs on a gray body, while Teresa routinely outfishes me using a yellow-bodied bug with black legs. In making the bug, we start by lashing two rubber legs lengthwise along the hook, so that one inch extends forward of the eye (antennae) and two or three inches hang off the end of the hook in back. Then the body is lashed to the hook in two places in an attempt to emphasize the three-segmented body plan of dragonflies, damselflies, wasps, bees, and other tasty, crunchable insects that fish commonly eat. Last to go on are two pairs of transverse rubber legs, one pair tied into each body constriction, the legs extending outward an inch or so to either side. These bugs are light, trim, and easy to cast even with a three-weight line, but the rubber legs sticking out in all directions give an impression of much larger bulk and mass when floating on the water. The bluegill spider has the same silhouette, shadow, and surface impression as a bass bug but much less air resistance. We favor largesized bodies and relatively large hooks, since they weed out the troublesome silver dollarâsized panfish in favor of big âbullsâ in the eight-to-eleven-inch class.
For this seasonâs first panfish outing, Teresa chose a small impoundment folded into the grassy uplands that rise sharply south of the Wisconsin River, toward the crest of Military Ridge. During the late 1950s a tall earthen dam was built across the upper reaches of a small trout stream. It flooded two narrow valleys and formed a handsome lake, well protected by ochre sandstone cliffs and tall white pines that whisper in the breeze. Today we question the wisdom of such a sizable alteration in the landscape, but at that time the change was seen as âprogress.â Brown trout can still be found in the stream below the dam, and a very cosmopolitan fish population has grown up in the lake above. Surprisingly, and to my
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