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No group of fish is better suited to catching with fly tackle than panfish. Not only are bluegills, perch, crappies and others abundant and inhabit almost every water, they're aggressive, easy to locate and great to eat.


Fishermen from Minnesota to Maine, California to Florida thrill to the tug of a roe-filled, bright-colored bluegill as it uses its platter-shaped body to thwart the pull of the angler at the other end of the line. And among these legions of panfishermen, there is an increasing number of anglers who delight in catching tough little panfish with fly-rod tackle. Trouble is, though, too many fishermen only use fly tackle for panfish in spring when bluegills, sunfish and others are stacked on spawning beds.

About the only time I see many fly fishermen on the water near my home in Florida is in spring, when "bream" are on the beds and are setups for flies and bugs. When bream are thick on their spawning beds, you can fill a limit quick with flies. In fact, I don't think there's a better, more effective way of catching bedding panfish than with flies. But I use fly tackle to catch panfish year-round, and I catch as many fish as almost anyone -- even as many as guys who soak crickets and earthworms.

It's smart to use a wide assortment of flies and small bugs for panfish, changing lures often during the course of a day's fishing until the most productive fly or bug is discovered. In spring, though, a green, white, black or orange sponge-rubber spider with rubber legs (size 6 to 10) will consistently produce more bedding panfish than any other fly or bug.


The key to success in fishing a sponge spider is that it must be presented slowly, right in front of a sunfish's. For this reason, when I'm fishing for bedding panfish, I always have some heavily weighted spiders, lightly weighted ones, and some with no weight at all. Pinching on a split-shot or two ahead of a spider also can help produce the sink rate that panfish prefer on that particular day.


In many parts of the country, fly-fishing for panfish can be enjoyed virtually year-round.

The best sponge spiders have six or eight very lively rubber legs. White or black legs are good, and it's important they're not too long. Legs on some sponge spiders are over 2 inches long. I’ve found that they shouldn’t extend more than ½ inch on either side of the spider's sponge body. If they do, bream often just nip at the legs and won't suck in the entire fly.


Though the sponge spider is a personal favorite, when bream are loaded on spawning beds they can be caught in limit numbers by just about anyone casting almost any popular panfish fly or bug. It's when bluegills, sunfish and others are off the beds that it takes considerable skill to find and catch them with flies and bugs.


When big bream suddenly vacate a bed during the spawning season, it's almost a certainty they'll be schooled in deeper water, usually pretty close to spawning flats. Boat houses, docks, piers and bulkheads in 6 to 10 feet of water that are near spawning beds are choice places for panfish to hold as they wait to move back onto beds. These kinds of places also hold bream very well during the pre-spawn period, and in autumn as well.


Flies are potent on panfish in deeper water around docks, piers and similar man-made structures. I favor a 4- or 5-weight fly rod and a reel with a quick-change spool. A number of different fly line types, each on its own reel spool, make fly-fishing extremely versatile. By quickly and simply changing from one fly line type to another, it's possible to effectively cover the entire water column around a potential panfish structure.

Most of the time a simple sink-tip fly line is ideal when fishing water 6 to 10 feet deep around docks and piers. I like an easy-to-see white or red fly line that floats on the surface, with a dark-colored tip section that sinks the fly deep to where bream are holding. With just the tip of the line deep, I can see the "belly" of the line on the surface, and watch for the slightest "tick" or line jump, that indicates a panfish has hit. With a sunken fly, it's good to ever so slowly twitch the fly along once it's at the depth you want to fish (determined by the "countdown" method). It helps to move the fly a bit to draw attention to it for panfish to notice. But more important, moving the fly slowly helps an angler feel strikes, because all the slack is out of the line. When a fish mouths the lure, you feel it and set the hook.

This slow stripping of a fly when working deep water only should be practiced when the fly is in the heart of the "strike zone." Don't fish the fly slowly all the way back to the rod before making the next cast, or you'll waste fishing time. Generally, for such fishing, the cast is made, the fly is allowed to sink for 5 to 20 seconds, then it's "stripped" slowly for a minute or so through the "fish zone." If no fish hit as the fly covers 10 to 20 feet (horizontally), another cast is made.

This is one of the important parts of fly-rodding for panfish: don't waste time. A fly rod in the hands of an expert is a deadly fishing tool that presents a fly or bug quickly and efficiently.

An instantaneous hookset is imperative when fishing flies deep for panfish, because bluegills, perch, crappies and others will take a fly, mouth it, then reject it in an instant. If you don't feel the take and set the hook right away, you'll never know the fish was there.


I have two favorite fly patterns for working deep-water panfish, especially bluegills. One is a standard, slightly weighted size 8 or 10, gray, wool-body nymph. A weighted nymph is especially good because it keeps the fly leader and line taught as it's fished, which aids in detecting strikes.



Weighted flies stripped along slowly are potent on sunfish.

Sometimes it's effective to fish three or four different size and color nymphs (red, green, brown and black) off "dropper" leaders. The additional flies help keep the fly line tight during very deep fishing (or in swift current), as well as draws reluctant deepwater panfish to the smorgasbord of lures. Should one nymph produce better than the others, switch the entire smorgasbord to that type nymph, and then commonly catch more than one bluegill or perch at a time.


My other favorite deepwater bream fly is a simple size 6 or 8 spun deer hair bug, with the hair trimmed close to the hook shank. I like natural deer hair color, but ones dyed all black, green or red can be excellent, too. The bug floats like a cork due to its dense, spun deer hair, but it can be fished deep with a sink-tip fly line or by fitting a split shot or
two 18 inches above it.



I first saw the little deer hair bug 20 years ago on Lake Okeechobee in South Florida. Bluegill and sunfish flyrodding there is a big deal, and the deer hair bug is a spring killer. I started using it in other waters from Canada to Texas -- fishing it deep and on top -- and found it's a killer almost everywhere. It's especially good for suspended fish found near docks, pilings and deep weed edges because it has a very slow "fall rate" due to its inherent buoyancy. The bug wants to float, but it is taken down slowly with a sinking line or a bit of split shot.


Leeches aren't the most common panfish bait. But my close friend and former Fishing Facts Editor Spence Petros has used them for years to catch some of the biggest bluegills taken every year in the Upper Midwest. Spence got me thinking about using leech fly patterns for bluegills, which I've done in the South with great success. The leech fly pattern is well known and used frequently for trout and smallmouth bass. A smaller version of the same fly that measures 1 to 1 1/2 inches long is an outstanding taker of hefty bluegills. It's made from rabbit fur and/or marabou, tied streamer-style on a size 8 to 4 long-shank hook. Rabbit fur leech flies sink very well and have accounted for a lot of summer bluegills for me in deep creeks and along vertical weed walls. I don't know why bluegills eat leeches, since it's hard to believe they're a natural food. But a black leech fly is one of the best you can use if plate-size panfish are your target.

Throughout much of America there are rivers jammed with bluegills, sunfish and perch of various kinds. Most offer excellent panfishing, particularly for fly fishermen in warm weather. Fly-rodders can score particularly well on panfish by floating streams in canoes, johnboats and float tubes, or by wading. Often the most productive rivers are spring-fed or very weedy, fertile ones. Low-water conditions during summer are ideal for a fly-rod panfisherman, because he can most effectively present nymphs, streamers, poppers and even dry flies to fish concentrated in deep pools and riffles. Most stream panfish will station around brushy banks and sunken weedlines.

Redbreast sunfish are one of the most popular stream panfish targets, and the best fishing for them typically is found during mid-summer when they jam tight to willow and buck-brush "sweepers" along river banks. Small, bright-colored streamers and nymphs are deadly on spunky redbreasts, with yellow, white and orange flies especially good. Some of the most memorable redbreast fly-fishing I've ever had has been on streams while working from float tubes. Fly-fishing from float tubes is unique, and because they're quiet and have a low profile, you can approach spooky fish in clear water with ease.

My good friend Truel Myers has made a specialty of float tube fly-fishing on numerous panfish-filled ponds in Callaway Gardens, Ga. The ponds there have some of the biggest bluegills and sunfish I've ever seen, and they are setups for flies when easing around in float tubes. One great thing about fly-fishing from a float tube is that you're on your own, well away from other anglers and line-fouling shoreline brush and snags. Two or three anglers can fish "together," but you're far enough apart in your own tube not to interfere with each other's casting. It's like wading a stream, but better because you're more mobile and capable of fishing deep water where hefty panfish reside.

Fly-rodding for crappies is especially productive in spring when fish are schooled and aggressive around brushpiles, weed beds, flooded timber, lily pads, etc. Crappie flies must be fished slowly, so buoyant bucktail streamers are great. Slow-sinking, wet-tip fly lines work well with streamers.

"Strip casting" is a little-known fly-rod technique that's outstanding for
crappies in deep water. It also works well for other notorious minnow-eaters like white bass, yellow and white perch. "Strip casting" is not a pure form of fly-fishing, but it's extremely effective for open-water panfishing. Essentially, the angler uses a small Colorado or willowleaf spinner with a tiny piece of panfish-size pork rind fitted onto the hook. This "spinner-and-strip" is then tied to the fly leader. Casting the "spinner-and-strip" is not done with the usual fly-rod technique. Rather, the rig is flipped out in a kind of roll-cast method. Line is lengthened with each "roll," as the line is pulled through the rod guides by the lure during each cast. Some experienced "strip casters" do not use a fly line, but instead opt for a fly reel full of 10-pound-test monofilament. The mono shoots through fly rod guides easier for longer "casts" than does a standard fly line.


In fishing the spinner-and-strip, an angler simply "tight lines" the lure as it slowly sinks in likely crappie, white bass and perch areas. It's also a great lure when working surface-schooling white bass. Once the spinner-and-strip is deep, it's retrieved back to the fly-rodder in a normal slow fashion.

Being observant on the water often leads to more and bigger fish. One summer day, for example, I was panfishing with a couple of Alabama fishermen who were deadly with earthworms and crickets. But as we fished a bay suddenly it was covered with non-biting "blind" mosquitoes, which turned on a bluegill feeding spree unlike anything I'd ever seen. By picking up a fly rod and using tiny trout-size mosquito patterns, I caught more and bigger bluegills than my companions using bait.

Another time, on a big South Carolina farm pond, catalpa worms were swarming on shoreline trees. When I noticed huge bluegills feeding on every hapless worm that fell to the water, I quickly tied on an all-green, elongated panfish popping bug, and was quickly into 1-pound average "copperhead" bluegills.


Never before has the fly-rod panfisherman had so much going for him. Fly-fishing equipment today is the best it's ever been. Panfish are available in virtually all waters, and good fly-fishing for them can be enjoyed virtually year-round. Moreover, panfish populations are booming almost everywhere, limits are liberal, and panfish are outstanding table fare. Who could ask for more?

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