Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
The first year I learned to fly fish, I would go to a a local stream that was heavily stocked with trout. My intention was to catch trout, not bluegills. There were so many bluegills in this stream that not mater what trout fly I would cast, they were always there to pounce on it. It actually became annoying because I saw it as an interruption to my trout fishing.
Now when fishing for bluegills and rock bass, I use traditional panfish flys because I (mistakenly??) have the notion that (for surface flys at least) a brite color and a small splash on the surface gets their attention better, resulting in more strikes.
There may be no truth to this notion at all and some day I would love to have the time to experiment going back and forth between traditional trout flys and panfish flys and seeing if one is more productive that the other.
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
Hi All,
Bluegill can be pretty selective, and I have seen them taking dun mayfly duns when they would not take anything I had except for a mosquito dry I had that was in the ball park to matching the duns. When I lost that one fly it was over for me. (I had inadvertently left my mayflies at home.) Dave Whitlock has written that trophy bluegills are more selective, difficult to catch, and wary than trophy trout or trophy bass.
Bluegill books I have read advocate "match the hatch", as being highly sucessful, as have some of the feature articles on this site. I have had some similar experience in my own bluegill fishing.
Thus, for me, it makes sense that trout patterns that match the bugs that bluegills are on, will work. I carry quite a few tradtional trout patterns, such as Wulffs, pheasant tails, damsel fly nymphs, buggers, woolly worms, etc., for bluegills.
I do keep separate boxes, because I don't, for example, carry elk hair caddis, stimulators (except for specific hopper patterns), improved sofa pillows, for bluegills. Nor do I carry nearly as many colors of Wulffs for bluegills as I do for trout. In my nymph boxes, I don't carry stone nymphs etc. for gills.
On the other hand, I carry a much larger selection of nymphs and drys in my trout boxes than in my bluegill boxes.
I try to carry too many flies of all kinds for both kinds of fishing anyway, so carrying ones I won't use just makes it worse.
I want to maximize the patterns that I will use in the boxes I do carry, and so don't want to carry ones I won't use, so have gone to separate boxes.
Even though flies that don't seem to make sense seem to work fine at times. Around here I don't find caddis or stoneflies in my bluegill water, as you would expect, but EHCs and stims do work for gills at times I am sure. However, Dave Huges, for example, does most of his hopper fishing with EHC. The right stimulator is often a good hopper pattern too.
Still, I would rather use a traditional bluegill fly when it is working for four reasons: 1. the poppers, foam spiders, chenille bugs, etc. seem to have a much longer lifetime than to traditional trout flies, 2. poppers, chenille bugs, foam spiders, etc., in size 12, 10, or 8 do not seem to be taken as deeply as do small pheasant tails and Wulffs, so they are easier to remove from the gill with out injuring it, 3. #12, #10, and #8 traditional bluegill flies tend to discourage the dinks, and I am not bothered with them nearly as much as when using smaller tradtional trout flies, and 4. I like using the traditional poppers, spiders, and chenille bugs.
Regards,
Gandolf
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
Bull gill's can be very selective....But so can Smallies... The other year while fishing the lower sections of Penns Creek..Great smallmouth fishing I might add...
I could see fish riseing all over the place...Could'nt get a bite...Tried everything I'd known to have worked in the past...Notta...Finially, I noticed this bug coming at me on the water..so, I reached out and grabbed em...turned out it was a caddis..of the tent wing veritity..
Seeing as I was carrying my downs chest box that day...which is my trout setup, I was able to readily match it...and bam....day saved...caught the rest of the eve right up till night fall and then everything died as it almost always does...I won't leave home for the penns and a few other places around here without many of the hatch matches for any of them...It may mean a trip back to the car at times...but I'll do darn near anything to catch fish!!.
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
I have had evenings when a McGinty dry or LeTort cricket just can't be beat. The aforementioned bitch creek nymph & prince nymphs are also productive for me. Warren put it well too.
Mike
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
I am amazed at what various fish will take. Bluegills pretty much take anything they can get those little mouths around, in my experience. Trout flies should work fine.
The one that blew me away was hooking up with a 19" channel cat on my 4wt rod. He took a #16 bead head nymph! What a blast!
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
Please let's do not forget the classic bluegill bait... empty hook.
This is a tradition. My wife and myself every year catch one bluegill each on an empty hook.
Most of the time this happens after landing a fish when you set the rod down and hook drops to the water next to the boat. :D
And yes I am guilty: I do not always go fishing with the long rod.
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
What are trout flies?
What are panfish flies?
I use flies that imitate certain things that trout and panfish eat. Since many of those things are the same, flies, nymphs, little fish... I don't really consider them to be one thing or the other...
I use a few flies that don't look much like anything, or through the addition of stuff like rubber legs no longer really resemble what they were designed to represent. But the fish seem to like em.
Do trout and panfish have different preferences? Yep. in my experience they do... although, most days Joe's "Old Reliable" is a hard fly to beat for either group. And I am amazed at how many nice pan fish I have caught with tiny midge larva, which most would call a "trout fly".
But I can't think of a fly from my trout box, that wouldn't sometimes catch a panfish, even those designed for bugs they don't often see. Try a size 18 CDC and Elk if you don't believe me.
While the other direction (flies in my panfish boxes for trout) may be less productive (I've caught trout on poppers, but I think they were just the dumb ones :) ) I am betting that a gilbuster, or a jitterbee would be just the ticket on some of those picky trouts that are tired of getting stung by all those nasty little BWO's people are fishing over them.
The point is... I think the distinction has been over blown, and sometimes to the detriment of fisher-people.
I also think that the distinction has diminished peoples appreciation of pan fish, the frequent implication being that a gill will bite anything you throw at it. With those tiny little biters, that is probably true, but with the big 'uns. I don't think it is true at all. To consistently bring home 10 inch gils and 14 inch crappies, presentation and pattern are equally important..
Just my 2 cents.. your mileage may indeed vary.
Ed
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
In many cases I think that the fies are equally effective. For my largest panfish I fidn that flies tied specficially for them work better for me. Maybe it is that I have more confidence in them.
This whole dicussion is colored by what is available to many people through catalgoues or fly shops, if they don't tie. They have small popper for panfish. There are poppers, decievers and clousers for bass.
Would the answers given here be changed if there were as many pages of warmwater flies as there are for trout flies? Or even if there were as many varieites of flies listed as those for saltwater?
I will end the rant now.
Rick
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
Dave, that certianly does fit the scale of amazing...My most amazeing catch was a 15 in. pike..on of all things a #14 Blue Dun dry....I would have bet $1000.00 I was casting to a trout the way it was rythmicaly riseing and taking ever so gently under the shade a willow limb...Anyone else have an experience like this ??
Re: Are trout flies just as effective as panfish flies?
Black Ants
Mosquitos
Wooly Buggers
GRHE
PTN
Black Gnats
Scuds
San Juan Worms
Marabou Leachs
All in my warm water fly boxes
Greg