Fly Fishing: The Bluegill Spawn - The Fisherman

Fly Fishing: The Bluegill Spawn

Bluegills
Bluegills are fun and can be quite aggressive during their spawn, making for some fast and furious fishing on the fly rod. Matt Broderick photo.

Fly rodding spawning bluegills made easy this spring.

If you like lots of action and catching lots of fish — who doesn’t? It’s the time of year for you. Why? Because it’s time for the bluegill spawn. Small they are, but fun to catch? You bet! And I think the enjoyment of catching them is significantly magnified when using the fly rod. The spawn congregates them into shallow waters in often big numbers, and this springtime situation offers wonderful sport for everyone, from experienced fly-rodders all the way to someone just starting out with the long rod. For the beginner and novice, bluegills can be a great “learning” fish — a way to learn, hone , and perfect your fly fishing skills and during the spawn their availability can be so prominent that you have the potential to do this in a much shorter period of time than at any other time of year. In addition, they aren’t hard to catch, and can be around in such numbers that if you make a mistake with one or two fish, you don’t have to fret. All you often have to do is just make another cast to hook up. Basically, fishing the bluegill spawn is pure fishing fun and more.

It happens in lakes and ponds in shallow, often weedy bays and coves, over “flats” and along shallow water shorelines. The bluegills will spawn after the largemouth bass do, often in the same areas. Their nests look like barren, light colored, circles about a foot or so in diameter. Most likely there will be more than one in close vicinity, if not many. Spawning water temps will be from 68 to 75 degrees. You usually don’t have to look that hard to see the nests and the activity, it’ll be right in front of you if it’s there. Some lakes have many bluegill, and some have few.  If your lake has many you will visually see their numbers during the spawn. If you can, fish a lake that has the numbers. Why not? Oftentimes too, you’ll catch your biggest bluegills of the year in the spring.

Small poppers are extremely effective, and poppers are also the most fun fly to use because you see the surface strike of the fish. Use (hook) size # 10 or # 12. Any color can be effective, but I would choose one I could see, as this makes it easy to keep an eye on it when it’s on the water’s surface. Other effective flies include nymphs, dry flies, Squirmy Wormies, Rabbit Strip Jiggys, and small streamer flies

Cast the fly out, strip to straighten the fly line, let it rest a bit, and then just twitch it.  Let it rest some again, and if you don’t get a strike, give it another small twitch. Be patient with the pauses. They are as important as the twitch. Keep repeating this twitch, pause routine until you get a strike, or bring the fly in so close to you that you have to make another cast. When you get a strike all you have to do to hook the bluegill well is to lift the rod tip up sharply. They’re easy to hook. You probably won’t have to cast far to catch fish, so being a skilled caster isn’t a requirement. In fact, you could probably roll cast for just about all your fishing here if you had to.

For tackle, light rods any length will do the job but commonly 9 foot or shorter is the choice. When selecting a fly reel use one that balances with your rod. No backing is needed for bluegill. They won’t go on any runs, long or short. A weight forward floating line of 2 to 4 wt is great for the light tackle angler but 5 or 6 wt will help deliver larger presentations.  A total leader length of 9 feet will work. Also incorporating 3-feet of tippet in 4x or 3x helps present the flies. Use 2x for Jiggy, and a popper presentation.

Push down the barb on your bluegill flies and poppers. Doing so makes it easier to release your fish, or even yourself or another if someone errantly gets hooked. If you grab them, make sure you don’t get pierced by the spinous dorsal fin. Sometimes you can just twist the fly out without touching the fish. If you want to, keep some for a meal. They taste great! Bluegill aren’t categorized as “panfish” for nothing.

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