One of my favorite species to go after since I started fly fishing are brim/bluegill/panfish/sunfish or whatever you call them. Ounce-per-ounce they are great fighters.

Now, when I started I used the bluegill specific poppers and foam and woolly spiders, etc. and did fine. I later tried wet flies and patterns like hare's ear nymphs and found them very effective.

I later thought, why not try established trout patterns of things that look like things panfish eat as well so I went on to try scuds, stimulators, humpys, griffth's gnats, elk hair caddis, etc. and they catch just as many fish. I almost never head to a pond and not catch a bluegill, redbreast, greenie, rio grande, shellcracker or even largemouth on a trout fly I try.

Given that the flies created for trout have been designed and tested over decades to match or resemble the same sort of things that bluegill eat why do we try and keep a separate fly box with panfish specific flies? Could it be that all the places I fish for panfish, the fish don't care and will eat anything I give them (not likely I think)?

Sorry, if this topic has come up before but the Search function isn't returning any results older than April of this year.