I’ve been casting to gills on the beds the last two times out ( over the past week) with many different patterns:
Wb, damsel nymphs, PT , GRHE, scuds, generic nymphs & soft hackles ( all dark colors) , wooly worm …
I get very little action… maybe one hit and then nothing. I’m at least 30 to 40 ft away with a 8 ft leader. I’m not looking for a new killer pattern but trying to learn something about this behavior. I expected very aggressive male attacks in the bed area. I know they are in the beds because I have crept up on the bed area from the shore and can see them.
Is it possible that the eggs have not been layed yet so the males are not protective… The most aggresive takes have been in non-bedding areas and the fishing there has been as expected.
Couple of questions… are you fishing the same time of day and at the same speed? I’d start thinking outside of the box… If you’re always fishing the afternoon or evening, try the morning. If you are creeping the nymphs in, try letting them sink and then give them a quick strip, sink, quick strip… maybe try for a reaction strike. Also, just for kicks, try a sponge spider (again with different retrieves, letting it sit above the bed, dapping, etc.). Maybe they’ll be more aggressive if their target is on top.
Have you tried letting the fly sink onto the bed. In my rubber worm days I would notice that gills would grab the worm by the tail to move it off the bed then spit it out only once it was sitting on top of the bed. It seemed like more of a cleaning house strike than an aggressive one.
Who has time for stress when there are fish to catch.
Nick
zz- at the risk of being obivious have you read Jim’s “thru the looking glass” thread? That is one possible explanation. As the bluegills are not feeding but attempting to move the “thing” out of their nest you may have problems with feeling a hit.
Try this [it has often worked for me]. Switch to a light coloured fly - I like a yellow/griz wooly worm tied with red thread and with a pair of med rubberlegs on each side - and strike when the fly disappeares. The fly should be un-weighted and the legs should be at least 3/4" long. This will give you a very slow fall which is what you want this time of the year.
I saw that post , it’s one of the best we have had in a while.
I did think of the “mouthing” issue so I put on an indicator and later a popper. I caught several with this setup in non-bed areas but got no interest in the bed zones.
The learning curve in fishing is what keeps me comming back and back. This is an experience that I haven’t had before and can’t really explain.
Sunday we found a lot of bream and hybrid bream on beds. The fly bead suggested is what works great for me, mine are tied with yellow and black colored cheniile, like bumble bee colored with bright green legs. I caught over 60 fish out of those beds on Sunday and several crappie on that fly. It is my go to fly when I find bream on beds. WHen they are staging or moved off the beds, we fish a fly of the same structure but tied on a jig head about 6-8 feet below a strike indicator. Those post spawn and staging fish love that fly/jig and it has been the death of a lot of big bream and redears for us. Its 1/124 and 1/300 jig head with black ice chenille and rubber tail and rubber legs. Good luck with those fish, my favorite kind to catch.
[This message has been edited by parrotheadcrb (edited 26 April 2006).]
I have been doing more “indicator” fishing over the last 3 or 4 years. Actually I’ve been using indicators effectively in 2-3’ of water over the last 2 weeks! I use a 5/16" foam indicator set about 12-16" deep. A week and a half ago that rig accounted for easily 2/3 of the 40 bluegill/redear I caught. I usually fish either a cream scud or a red-butt epoxy ant under the indicator. The hits were very light and the fish very spooky. However, with the small indicator and the 2wt rod I was using I caught a “few”. The “trick”, if you want to call it that, was to cast beyond where you expected the fish to be and “ease” it back thru them.
If the dark colors are not working I would go to a bright fly. Use a Skip Morris Panfish fly with a red & yellow wing. A gilly is good to use at this time also.
Both are in my Favorites in the panfish archives(about number 305).
Some times bright colors work better during the spawn.
Also use unweighted flies as they stay there longer to irritating the fish into wanting to do something about them.
Rick
[This message has been edited by Rick Z (edited 26 April 2006).]
I’ve had some mixed results with gills (large and small alike), I did pretty good with a Griffith’s gnat in size 18 fished on top (dry). The little gills can get ahold of the size 18’s fairly well.
If that doesn’t work out then I go to a woolly worm or bugger in a medium color range -orange, blue or tan body palmered with brown and/or grizzly hackle. I fish these in about size 8 to 12, (wet) along the beds - stripped along about 3-6 inches and then let sit for 5 seconds, then strip again. If that seems too slow then I count 3 seconds on a few strips. I don’t rush it unless the fish prefer it that way.
There’s almost nothin’ wrong with the first lie, it’s the weight of all the others holdin’ it up that gets ya’! - Tim
Good advice from everyone thus far. I can tell you what has worked for me the past 3 weeks … a black foam ant with grizzly hackle in the middle of the ant. Throw fly into the beds and just let it sit … maybe a small twitch every now and then. I tried many of the same flies you did with the same results. There’s just something about a fly that “lingers” in the zone. I took my six year old son 4 days ago and he caught 12 big 'uns on the black foam ant.
I’ve had pretty good luck with dries that include red hackle. After they sink, I strip them in, vary and experiment to see what rate works, and the fish have been cooperative. I used a bi-visible a couple of days ago that more or less matched a desultory hatch that might have been sulphur duns. (Let me know if I can be more vague.) I think that it was size 16. The rear part of the hackle was red, as was the tail. The front hackle approximated the color of the duns. The size was right. It was popular enough with the bream. I am growing increasingly fond of trude-style wings. They seem to perform better after my dries become wets. I have been stream fising and after my flies sink, I have been swinging through fast water with good results. I have been attracking the attention of everything from smallies thru fallfish.
If the fish keep pecking at my leader knots, every one of those knots is going to incorporate a small hook to deal with the miscreants…
The “trick”, if you want to call it that, was to cast beyond where you expected the fish to be and “ease” it back thru them.