My favorite way to target pickerel during the warmer months is with topwater flies. Pickerel are suckers for frog patterns! However, when the weather cools down, it is time to change tactics. My go-to flies are streamer patterns. While there are many effective streamer patterns to choose from, my favorite streamers are those that imitate yellow perch.
Read moreFly Tying Friday - The Pumpkinseed James Wood Bucktail
The Pumpkinseed James Wood Bucktail
On a recent trip, I decided to tie on a fresh Pumpkinseed JWB and keep an accurate record of its performance. The fly pictured above caught thirty-six bluegills, nine crappies, four bass (ranging from 12 -16 inches), and one small pickerel before being inhaled and promptly bitten off by a second larger one.
Read moreBaby Bluegill Streamers for Big Panfish!
Big panfish cannot resist the Baby Bluegill Streamer!
Every year when spring rolls around, a ritual repeats itself underwater on lakes and ponds everywhere. Big male bluegills emerge from the depths and enter the shallows. They are fish on a mission, and that mission is to build a nest, attract a mate and defend that nest, and it's young to the bitter end.
Read moreA classic panfish fly with an unusual name - Tom Nixon's .56%er
Tom Nixon’s .56%er may have an unusual name but the fish don’t seem to care!
I recently reread Tom Nixon's Fly Tying and Fly Fishing for Bass and Panfish. I remember taking this book out from the library when I was a boy in the 1970s. I was just getting interested in fly tying, and this was one of the first books I attempted to read on the subject. I say "attempted" because, like most fly tying books of that era, they contained vague instructions and horrible line drawings that were supposed to clarify the techniques described. I returned the book with a sense of being more confused than ever. Fast forward to the present day with forty years of fly tying looking at me in the rearview mirror; I breezed through the book in a couple of evenings. What mystified the ten-year-old boy made perfect sense to me now.
Read moreFly Tying Friday - The Baggenstoss
This weeks submission comes from C.H.Beaumont. The Baggenstoss Streamer is a fly with an interesting name and a great story behind it.
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