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.
Cardinal
Everything I have read on the larger bluegill states that the larger ones will spawn out in deeper water. One article stated that when you find a bluegill bed in the shallow water you need to fish out from it in the deeper water to locate the larger spawning bluegill. Thanks for the tip on the sparkle yarn leech.
Warren
Cardinal
that sounds like that boa yarn that I have seen in the fly tying (craft) department at Wal Mart. Its also in the fly tying section at Michaels and Joanns.
Cool about those big old bluegills! I believe that the bigger ones tend to stay deeper, seems to be a part of getting big and not eaten up. The dinks tend to congregate nearer the surface and are the pesks who grab your fly before it can get deep enough.
This is the final straw, I am buying some of that yarn!
RRhyne56
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[url=http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/bgl/:52e4d]Good Ol? Lepomis Macrochirus[/url:52e4d]
The sparkle yarn is different than the boa yarn in recent posts ( although that is where I got the idea. ) The sparkle yarn I am talking about has a core thread but is mylar. The boa yarn in cotton or acrylic. This yarn would be in a craft section, not a yarn section of a store. It says ‘Sparkle Yarn’ on the package and does not come in a skein.
I believe you were experiencing spawning effects for all the BG. In ponds, even the huge BG will move shallow (2 feet) during that time. It is difficult to catch them because of all the other sized BG that are present also, but the big ones, really big ones, are there for spawning activity especially during the full moon in May and June.
[This message has been edited by meadowlark2 (edited 25 May 2006).]
Hi Cardinal,
Over the last couple I years I guess
Rick Z has introduced a lot of us to the
leech patterns for bluegills. What a
great pattern and so easy to fish and tie.
There seems to be quite a few variations
and the common denominator is the fact that
they work and work well.G Warm regards,
Jim
I started using a leech last year that uses ice dub for the body:
12 3XL hook
1/8" beadhead
maribou or rabbit from “zonker strip” for tail.
dub UV olive ice dub for the body [UV peacock is also goot].
after dubbing use ‘velcro on a stick’ to pick out the body that same as if you are using mohair.
The BG’s just slam it!
donald
I like leech patterns so much that there is always one on a fly rod when I am fishing.
Be it boa yarn, eyelash yarn, marabou, crow or coot feather.
Rick
Last update. I Returned to the same pond last night. The gills were not biting anything subsurface I threw at them. Not the leech pattern or anything else. I went through about 8 different flies. Finally I tied on a leech made with black and white sparkle yarn. ( Has a salt and pepper look but mostly pepper. The white makes is easy to see. ) To make a long very exciting story short, I caught a 10 inch bass on it and then a 20 inch largemouth on it. ( On my 4 wt. which was very exciting for me. ) It is still a killer pattern just not for gills last night.
Thanks to a recent two-person swap with Rick, I’ll be using his arsenal of boa leeches this weekend. I can hardly wait.
ps to Rick. Your crawdads were mailed on Wednesday! Sorry for the delay. Graduation/prom/end of the school year pressures at the newspaper. JGW