Big Bluegills
While my son is in fencing lessons I fish a small ( 1 acre ) public pond. This year it is full of algae which makes it great casting experience, dodging the clumps of algae, and mostly all my own. The worm drowners get discouraged easily. Last week my wife bought for me some black and white sparkle yarn. This has a center cord with semi-stiff mylar pieces of about 1/16 in width and 1/2 inch length ( but crinkled ) sticking out in all directions. She paid .50 for about 100 ft of it. I tied a "leech" by just putting a very short tail of maribou and wrapping the yarn around the hook about 6 times and tying it off. Unweighted and not fancy. We tested its sink rate and it went down quite fast. The yarn had nothing to make it float and the hook weight carried it down. Back to the pond. I fished it for an hour with a yellow foam spider and had good fishing. Some 5 inch bluegills, a couple of 6 inchers most of which were in breeding color. The fly got hit a lot more but the culprits were really small. I caught the smallest fish I ever caught on a fly, about 2 inches but was having good fun. Then a bluegill decided he really wanted that foam spider and swallowed it deep. Having received good advice from the forum here, I cut my line, wished him good digestion, was glad I had no lead on the fly and tossed him back. I then tried my black yarn leech fly and cast out. True to form the fly sank quickly and I started a slow retieve. I felt on the line what felt like light taps. I thought at first it was some hang up on algae so I gave it a quick jerk. It jerked back and I pulled in a 7 inch, fat bluegill. I tried again and the same pattern of little taps before I set the hook. This time it was a large 10 inch gill. No breeding color at all but a deep steely blue. I did not know such a fish lived in that little pond. I cast in a different direction and a sharp tug let me set the hook in a largemouth of 11 inches. Unfortunately he put the fly deep and I could not get it out so he went to compare notes with the digester of the foam spider but I was amazed at how good that little black leech fly worked. And I really enjoyed the subtle tap - tap of the big boys hitting the fly in the deeper water of the pond. I have wondered about the large bluegill not having breeding colors. I would imagine the deeper parts of the pond are colder and the bluegills living there would breed later. I have seen the beds of little bg's in the shallows and assumed all the bg's bred there but I wonder if the big ones are deeper. At any rate if your wife brings you some cheap sparkle yarn be sure to try it out.
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