I headed to a small community pond with a few friends, Blake and Colin. We caught a mixed bag of crappies, green sunfish, and bluegills. I'll break the afternoon into three parts. Part I: There was an intermittent breeze that would kick up and we saw a few fish rising which were most likely eating bugs that were being blown off the trees above. Blake started "swimming" his fly right near the surface of the water which started producing a lot of fish. We decided to switch to some foam beetles which drew plenty of hits and fish on top. Blake even got several crappie on his beetle pattern. We caught quite a few crappie overall but the green sunfish ruled the first part of the day. Colin used my vintage Fenwick FF806 glass rod and was doing just fine tallying up the fish.
Part II: We walked down a different bank and noticed some spawning areas where the green sunfish were milling around in the shallows guarding nesting areas. The fish were ultra aggressive and we started pulling them out one after another. They were so aggressive I switched it up and put on a red foam popper which I caught some very nice and chunky green sunfish on. We all added many more fish to our tally in this area, mostly green sunfish or "black perch" as Blake called them. At one point Blake added a dropper off the beetle and three separate times landed fish on both flies at the same time!
Part III: Colin and I continued fishing the nesting area while Blake wandered down to one of the four corners of the pond. He called us over after a bit as he seemed to be on to something special. He was on to something! He was catching nice bluegills practically every cast. There was probably a ten foot square area about 25 feet off shore where he was landing his fly. We started targeting the area and we too started catching some nice chunky bluegills. Blake must have found either a big stationary school or a big time nesting area because the small spot was machine like in producing bluegill after bluegill. It was nonstop hits and/or landed fish for quite awhile. We kept catching fish out of the area right until I had to leave. Overall it was a killer day and we probably all landed around 50 fish each, maybe even more since we lost count early on. Flies fished included foam beetles, panfish poppers, small clouser minnows, scuds, myakka minnows, and a variety of other weighted panfish style flies.
