Secrets of Late-Season Panfishing, with Bart Lombardo
Podcast Transcript:
Tom R.: Hi, and welcome to the "Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast." This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer, and my guest this week is the great Bart Lombardo. Bart is a good friend, and he's kind of my go-to guy for panfish questions. Bart has devoted his life [00:00:30.300] to fly fishing for panfish. Not that he doesn't love to fish for trout and saltwater species and other things, but he's really studied panfish and loves fishing for panfish and developing flies for panfish.
So, one of the questions I want to ask Bart is: it's really easy to find bluegills and pumpkin seeds and rock bass early in the season when they're in shallow and it's spawning. They're easy to spot, they're easy to take, and [00:01:00.259] then, as the season progresses, they get harder and harder to find and harder to catch. I actually, after I recorded this podcast with Bart a week or so ago, I went fishing for bluegills and used a lot of the recommendations that Bart made. I can personally vouch for the suggestions that he makes. If you are a fan of bluegills or other panfish and have trouble finding [00:01:30.340] them this time of year, later in the season, in the summer and early fall, then I think you're going to pick up some good tips in this podcast because panfish are so much fun.
But before we talk to Bart, let's do the Fly Box. Fly Box is where you offer some tips, or you ask me questions and I try to answer them, or I might reach out to people in my network to try to answer the question. Hopefully, these tips [00:02:00.260] will be helpful for you. And if you have a question for me, you can send them to
Jay: Hi, Tom. This is Jay from Boston. [00:02:30.120] I had a couple questions about mending. I've gone out with guides where we're fishing with indicators to nymphs, and they'll have me mend right before we get to what they call a bucket where they know fish will be. And I've even had them tell me that sometimes mending will pick the flies up and then drop them down, and we'll get strikes immediately after. But for the most part, I thought [00:03:00.360] conventional wisdom was moving your flies is going to disrupt the drift and turn off the fish. So I'm just wondering how much are you allowed to move your indicator when you mend before you should just pick it up and cast again or try to get a better drift?
And then I have a question about mending with dry flies. Is it okay if I move my dry fly when I mend? If I have to mend a few times [00:03:30.759], am I better off just picking it up with a small dry fly? How exactly am I trying to mend it? I just want to know if moving the dry fly is okay to mend or if that's going to happen, I should just pick it up and cast again. Thanks for your help, and I hope to hear this on the podcast.
Tom R.: So, Jay, as with most things fly fishing, it depends. I notice that [00:04:00.060] nymph fishing in particular, when I mend my line, unless it's a really long drift, I almost never get a strike after the mend. And yeah, you do need to mend to keep your fly from dragging. But I think it's always best to set it up with a reach cast or a slackline cast prior to fishing. When you mend, you can move the nymph, and you can move the strike indicator if you're not careful. [00:04:30.050] And moving the strike indicator could attract fish, but most of the time it probably spooks them.
And yeah, there's occasions when mending and moving the fly makes the fly rise and fall, and it might attract the fish. It's not so common in my experience, but that's just the fishing I do and the places I fish, and the way I fish. I don't think you want to try to move the fly. So when I mend, I always try not to move the fly or the indicator. [00:05:00.160] But a better option is to learn the reach cast and try to set up your mend prior to the fly and indicator hitting the water. It's perfectly okay to move the fly.
You can mend with a dry fly too, and sometimes you have to. And it's okay to move the dry fly. Sometimes a fish will take a dry fly as you move it. Most of the time they won't. But as long as you're [00:05:30.279], I don't know, maybe 3 or 4 feet ahead of a fish and you mend and you move the dry fly, they're probably not going to notice that and not going to see it.
And then sometimes you have to mend or even move your fly into position prior to it floating over the fish. I know on the Henry's Fork, a lot of the more experienced anglers will actually use, like we use a drag and drop technique for carp in that they'll cast [00:06:00.279] their fly out there. And if it's not quite right, they'll move it when it's well ahead of the fish into the fish's lane and then just drop the rod tip, creating some slack, and let the fly float over the fish.
So you can mend with a dry fly. Again, it's always best if you don't mend. Mending disturbs the water, and sometimes that doesn't matter if you're in fast water or riffle. It really doesn't matter. It's not going to disturb the fish. But if you're in flat water, sometimes mending [00:06:30.339] and moving the fly does create commotion that scares the fish. So yes, you can mend with a nymph. You can mend with a dry fly. Just don't mend it when you're close to where you suspect the fish is feeding.
All right. Now let's do an email. And this one is from Andrew from Pennsylvania and Vermont. "A few questions and a couple of comments, suggestions. Some recent listeners have mentioned not being able to see their flies because their [00:07:00.160] dry dropper had sunk or because they're using small flies. One thing that may help is a bright-colored strike putty. You don't need much, just something even smaller than a grain of rice. When applied to leader knots, it stays in place really well and sort of paints a line toward where your fly is. It's supposed to be biodegradable, so waste on the stream shouldn't be an issue."
And Andrew's second tip. "Polarized lenses aren't always your friend. Low light is the obvious example. But also when you're trying to see spinners [00:07:30.000] like Tricos in the air, sometimes you can't see them with your glasses on. But if you take them off, you can see them in the sunlight. Have you ever noticed that some fly patterns become ineffective? I know some have lasted generations, like the Prince Nymph, Adams, Pheasanttail, etc. But I've got a few patterns that seemed really effective for a few seasons that I can't seem to bite a fish on now, even in the same streams and seasons as previously. Wonder if it's just me or you or others have noticed it as well.
Do you ever fish under bridges? [00:08:00.220] I don't mean the small two-lane ones, and certainly not the footpath ones over small creeks. I'm aware that other than them being heavily fished, they can be productive. I mean, the major highway bridges, four lanes plus. There are a few rivers that I fish that have major highways crossing them, and I avoid fishing under the bridges thinking that the sunlight doesn't reach the stream bottom, so there would be less invertebrate life. I'm wondering if I'm missing something."
And finally, last question. "When tying flies, what is the point of [00:08:30.019] palmared hackles being tied at point first? With old necks, the hackle was almost triangular in shape, so the base of the feather had a longer hackle. But with the genetic modern hackle, the hackle size is pretty consistent, so why tie in from the tip?"
All right, Andrew. Well, your tip about using a little piece of strike putty is a great one. You can also use those new scientific anglers, markers, that put a little bit of some sort of floating paste on your leader that people use [00:09:00.700] as an indicator, and that works. And yes, I totally agree with you that polarized lenses are not always the best thing to be wearing, especially in low light. And as you said, you may want to remove your glasses if you're looking for spinners in the air.
Regarding some patterns becoming ineffective, yeah, I've seen this. And most of the time I've seen it in heavily-fished rivers where people fish a lot of beadheads, where I'll go to a non-beaded, [00:09:30.039] non-flashy nymph and do better. But yeah, you know, some patterns seem to come and go, and it may be that the fish have been caught and released on those patterns and they avoid them, or it could possibly be that the hatches have changed. Hatches can be cyclic, and maybe the same bugs that were in the river are not going to be as abundant this year. But I don't know. I certainly don't have a definite [00:10:00.220] answer for you there, but I have seen that.
Regarding fishing under bridges, yeah, it's interesting. If fish live under big four-lane bridges with trucks rumbling over them and stuff falling from them and everything, they seem to get used to it. They seem to get accustomed to it, and they will live happily underneath the bridge. It's interesting that tractor trailers can roll over [00:10:30.299] a bridge all day long, and if you happen to walk on the bridge, if it's one you can walk on and you poke your head over the side, you'll spook them immediately. They seem to get used to the traffic, but something that isn't a truck rumbling by, peering into the water, can spook them.
Funny you should mention that. I was fishing with my friend Daniel on a small stream that goes under a two-lane highway [00:11:00.220] the other week, and I was kind of guiding him. I said, "Well, you can fish under this bridge here, but take a cast if you want. I've never gotten a fish under this bridge." And he proceeded to make a cast and catches the biggest fish of the day. So that shows you what I know.
I don't think that sunlight under a bridge or no sunlight under a bridge is going to affect things much. The productivity of a river is the insects [00:11:30.240] are going to be distributed throughout the river, and just because there's a little patch of shade there doesn't get any sunlight doesn't mean that won't be a good habitat for the insects because the algae and stuff and the detritus that's in the river is going to flow underneath those bridges even though they don't get sunlight. I don't think that's the case. If I were you, I would try fishing under bridges more often because a lot of people avoid it, and fishing can be good there [00:12:00.059].
And finally, your question about a palmered hackle. Well, you know, what I have found in my fly tying is that if you tie a hackle in by the butt or by the heavier part of the stem and you wind it, it's going to naturally point forward toward the eye of the hook when you wind it very easily. If you want the hackle to slant back, then you tie it in by the tip, and it slants back. [00:12:30.080] So I don't think it's so much in the modern saddle hackles where there is really no variation in the fiber length along the hackle. It depends on which way you want the hackle to slant on your fly. Some people like it slanting forward, particularly on dry flies, and some people like it slanting back, particularly on wet flies and steelhead salmonflies.
Let's do another email. This one's from RK. "As you are the [00:13:00.159] dry dropper master, I want to pick your brain about why you pick a certain fly as your dry fly in a dropper rig. I know you've said previously that your preferred dry dropper is a chubby. I'd like to know your thought process for selecting a dry for dry dropper and what would cause you to change the pattern during the day.
My general outlook on a dry dropper has always been that it's just an indicator that has a hook in it. But I didn't know if perhaps you do a bit more hatch matching or hatch getting [00:13:30.139] close to, or you stick to terrestrials because they're occasionally going to be in a feeding lane, and it never hurts to slap a beetle or an ant or a cricket or a hopper or whatever down in the water. Hope to hear your thoughts."
That's an interesting question, RK, and I'm certainly not the dry dropper master. I do like to fish dry dropper. And generally, here's how I go about it. First of all, I want to pick something that is visible because it is going to be my strike indicator. So it's got to float well, and it's got to be [00:14:00.080] visible. And it's got to suspend whatever nymph I'm hanging on it. So, you know, if I've got a fairly big, heavy, weighted stone fly, I'm going to need a big dry fly. And in that case, yeah, maybe nobody's going to take that big dry fly. But you never know.
I don't really hatch match because I've found that fish are opportunists, trout are opportunists, and they will occasionally take a larger fly than you'd think. [00:14:30.340] And, you know, I'll use a grasshopper even in places where there aren't any hoppers, like a chubby is probably a grasshopper imitation or some of the other foam-bodied flies. It also can look like a stone fly or even a big moth. And those things get in the water. Cicadas, you know, there's lots of other insects that get in the water that trout feed on. So I don't worry too much. And I will fish a hopper even in places [00:15:00.240] where I know there's no grasshoppers falling into the water just because they're highly visible and they're good for suspending a fly.
And my general process is I'll start with a foam-bodied fly that floats well like the chubby. And if that doesn't work, then I'll go to something that's more hackly and hairy, you know, like a stimulator or perhaps a bigger [00:15:30.279] Parachute Adams with fairly heavy hackle on it. Just if that bigger foam fly doesn't seem to draw any rises, I will switch. But I'm not very scientific about it. I just try different things in the course of a day to see if one dry fly works better than the other. But, you know, again, it's got to be something that floats well and that I can see. Otherwise, I'm just going to fish a single dry. If I'm going to fish a smaller dry that won't suspend a nymph, then [00:16:00.059] I'm not going to hang a nymph on it. I'll just fish the smaller dry.
Here's an email from Ed. "Last weekend, I was working a deep shelf on the Yakima River. Flows are heavy on this river as dam releases are made for agriculture during midsummer. The extra flow makes many areas of large hydraulics, 2 to 3 feet wide, whirlpools and funnels of 4 to 8 inches that move along down and upstream current lanes. Usually I look for better water, as it seems counterintuitive for fish to hold in such strong [00:16:30.039] and chaotic currents. But the wet wading was limited at my location.
I used a purple chubby size 16, a little small, especially for the strength of the whirlpools, and high-sticked as best I could round the hydraulics but within a foot of the whirlpools, flicking the fly to mimic a drowning or struggling fly. I caught several fish, had bumps, and attempts to take the chubby with almost every cast for an hour. Have I been missing out on this all the time on water that holds great opportunities [00:17:00.460] or was my experience a one-off? Are there other techniques to fish large hydraulics that I could use in these situations? Thanks for any advice you have to offer."
So, Ed, I generally stay away from large hydraulics as well because fish do not like strong turbulence. All flowing water is turbulent to some degree, but when the cells of turbulence become quite large, you know, it pushes fish around, and you're right [00:17:30.380], it's chaotic. But I have noticed that in water that supports rainbow trout, if the hydraulics, if the swirls in the whirlpools are really large, like car-sized or bigger, the rainbow trout will get into those hydraulics, and they'll actually kind of hydroplane within the hydraulic and sit there and sip insects off the surface.
So I think [00:18:00.039] that really, really large hydraulics are decent places to look for fish. And really small hydraulics that are maybe an inch long, that's not going to bother fish too much. It seems to be those in-between hydraulics that are about the length of a trout that are really strong hydraulics that fish seem to stay away from.
Now, you said that you caught fish on the edge of the hydraulics, and that's certainly [00:18:30.079] a good place. You know, along the edges of the hydraulics are fine as long as the fish don't have to get pushed into those whirlpools. And I think you probably use the best method, high sticking, because drag is really tricky in those hydraulics because the water is usually smooth and it's moving in chaotic directions, and getting a good drift can be difficult. [00:19:00.119] So either high sticking as you did or using a really long, relatively fine tippet just to get a drag-free float. So, yeah, maybe I'm going to spend more time looking at hydraulics myself. But in general, I try to avoid them, but obviously, there are times when the fish will be in those whirlpools.
Martin: Hi, Tom. My name is Martin, and I live in Colorado. And a long time ago, my brother-in-law told me [00:19:30.079] that you should always tie the fly to your tippet from the top of the fly to the bottom of the fly or from the top of the eye of the hook to the bottom of the eye of the hook if you're looking at it from above. But of course, since then, I've tied my flies on to my tippet from the bottom up, from the top to the bottom. It always just depended on what was easier when it was held in my hand. So my question is, I wonder if there is a right way [00:20:00.099] and a wrong way to enter your tippet through the eye of the hook on a dry fly. Thanks again for all that you do for the sport. Love listening to your podcast.
Tom R.: Martin, everything I've seen says that it doesn't matter whether you come in from the top or the bottom of the fly. And I generally find out where it's easiest to poke the tippet through. Sometimes it's easier from the top. Sometimes it's easier from the bottom. Now, there are a few knots. You know, in the old days, people used [00:20:30.279] the turle knot a lot. And to do that knot properly, I believe you had to come in from the bottom of the fly. It's a really weak knot, and I never use it. I haven't used it since I was a kid.
But, you know, certain knots you need to come in from one direction or the other. But things like the Double Davy and the clinch knot, and the Orvis knot, you can come in through the fly either way, as far as I know, and [00:21:00.460] it shouldn't matter. So perhaps your brother-in-law heard some old timer talk about, you know, that use the turle knot. Maybe that's where he got that idea. Or the turle knot. I never figured out the correct way to pronounce it. T-U-R-L-E is the name of the knot. And there are some other knots I know that you have to come through one way or the other. But for most of the knots we need for tying on flies, it doesn't matter.
Here's an [00:21:30.000] email from Greg. "I've been in the ornamental fish business for 40 years and fly fishing a little longer. I live in southern Michigan, so we have a lot of year-round angling opportunities. We have always tended to fish for trout more in the fall through winter into early summer. During the summer through early fall, we fish more for smallmouth and carp. When we do fish for trout in the warmer months, we fish early in the morning or later in the evening. We've done this because that's just when trout tend to actively feed. Not really as a management tool.
[00:22:00.200] We know at what water temperatures most species of commercially raised fish start and stop feeding, along with the temperature we get the best growth rates. The upper feeding limit for most trout species tends to be about the same temperature as the upper limit we are told that we should stop fishing for them. If trout aren't actively feeding anyway, how important are the 65, 68, or 70 degree pledges on trout populations?"
Well, Greg, I don't know if commercially raised trout [00:22:30.440] have different temperature preferences than wild trout. But I have certainly seen wild trout feeding at 70, 72, even 74 or 75 degrees, and feeding quite actively. And it does make sense because their metabolism increases as the temperature increases. So wild fish are definitely not always going to shut off feeding when the water temperature gets [00:23:00.220] into the 68 and above range, or even we're hearing now 62, 63, 64, whatever. There's some recent research that says we should stop fishing in the early 60s, which I'm not so sure I'm going to buy into.
But anyway, they'll still feed at those temperatures. I've seen it. And so we stop because if it's 70 degrees, [00:23:30.259], if you play a fish and you play it too long, you're going to stress it, and it might die. So trout will feed. I think that the reason you see fish feeding in the morning and evening is that those are when insects are most active. Insects later in the season are typically not active in the middle of the day, except for terrestrial insects. And actually, the water temperature in the evening can often be quite high. You know, the water doesn't [00:24:00.079] cool down that quickly in the evening. Morning, yes. Evening, no. So it's not so much... I don't think it's so much that the water temperature cools in the evening, as it is the fact that the fish are a little bit less spooky and also that insects are more active at that time of day.
Here's an email from Charlie. "I fish the Lower and Upper Owens in California. Often told to use size 10 to 16 flies. The Middle Provo in Utah, size 16 to 22 [00:24:30.279]. Why such a discrepancy?"
Well, Charlie, it's probably just because of the predominant insects that fish feed on in those two different rivers. You know, the Owens in California probably has some larger flies that the fish feed on, and they're used to seeing them, so they're going to accept a fly that's in that range. And the Middle Provo, what I've seen there is mostly small mayflies and [00:25:00.059] midges. So a smaller fly is going to work because that's what the fish are used to feeding on. I don't think it's any more complicated than that. However, I wouldn't be afraid to use a size 22 fly on the Owens, and I wouldn't be afraid to use a size 12 or 14 on the Middle Provo because trouts are opportunists and you never know when they might want a bigger fly.
Here's an email from... I didn't get the name. "I'm a Colorado-based angler, and [00:25:30.019] over the years have gotten more and more into fishing for pike. While I'm still chasing that 40-incher, having a big pike hit your streamer is a blast. I have a question about leaders. I had originally used the prepackaged tapered pike leaders that many companies sell, but found the pike around here to be wire shy. I switched to a straight piece of 65-pound fluoro shock tippet and have been way more successful.
I recently had a moment where my streamer was hooked on a log, and I thought I was going to have to cut my fly line. I was so stuck [00:26:00.259]. I was able to work my way out of it this time, but decided to build my own tapered leaders, but having some trouble with the knots. What advice do you have for getting better at blood knots? It always seems that the heavier tippet never cinches up as tight as the side with the lighter tippet. Also, what knots do you suggest for the shock tippet? I'm struggling with tying my 16 or 20-pound class tippet to the 65-pound shock tippet."
Well, you know, what I [00:26:30.180] would do in this case is take a clue from what tarpon anglers do. There are many ways to tie two pieces of tippet that are very dissimilar in diameter. And if you're trying to tie a clinch knot in 65-pound to 20-pound class tippet, you're going to have a problem. Not only will that knot not tighten properly, but it's probably going to break. It's probably going to be pretty weak. So [00:27:00.140] there's a number of things you can do. There's various knots. One is to use an Albright knot or a slim beauty knot. You can find all of these knots on the web. None of them are that easy to tie.
My favorite knot for tying dissimilar diameters is an improved blood knot. And the improved blood knot is merely doubling over the smaller strand [00:27:30.180]. So you just double it over, just fold it over itself, and then tie a standard blood knot. Maybe take three turns with your 65-pound test and then take 4 or 5 turns with your doubled over 20-pound test and then wet that and carefully tighten it. And that improved blood knot is a really good knot.
The other option that you can do is to put a bimini twist in your [00:28:00.119] 20-pound class tippet. That's going to give you a doubled-over section that'll have more diameter and more strength. And a bimini twist is supposedly 100% knot, so once you double over your class tippet or your 20 pound with that bimini twist, then you should be able to more easily tie that doubled over piece of 20 pound to the 65 pound. But if I were you, I'd do some research on tarpon leaders because [00:28:30.559] essentially what you're tying is the same thing as a tarpon leader. And I think one of those knots will work quite well for you.
Here's an email from Peter from Toronto. "I am immensely grateful for you and Orvis. The Orvis website and a couple of your books have bitten off a large piece of my learning curve. Here's my question. There is a brown trout stream that I like to fish about an hour from my home. The stretch that I like to fish, I usually have [00:29:00.019] to myself, and it's usually productive, until this year. Now I can't buy a fish. The town is replacing a bridge about half a mile upstream from where I fish. There's a lot of heavy equipment, traffic, pile drivers, etc. Is it possible that the noise has scared off the fish even from half a mile away, or do I need a refresher course in getting a good drift?"
Well, Peter, I don't think... A half mile away, I don't think the noise and vibrations are going [00:29:30.359] to bother the fish. And I don't know for sure, but I don't think from a half mile away, it's going to scare them. But what might be happening is that the construction is putting a lot of silt and debris into the river. And it may actually have shallowed out some of your more productive runs. But the constant siltation in the water could drive the fish away, so they might move further downstream after that silt settles out, or they may actually [00:30:00.240] move upstream above the silt. But they may have just moved out because of that. That's all I can think of.
Tom: Hello, Tom. My name is Tom, and I have a question for you. First off, I want to tell you how much I enjoy your podcast. I listen to it religiously, and I'm really trying to learn some great ideas from you. I'm a new fly fisherman and a new fly tyer. [00:30:30.240] Well, I've been fishing a river outside of Chicago in Naperville, Illinois. It's called the DuPage River. Having a lot of fun, I've been wading the river, been catching a lot of smallmouth. Every time I go, I catch anywhere from probably 20 to 30 very small, smallmouth. We're talking maybe 4 to 6 inches in length. They're a lot of fun. I use a 5-weight and using a fly that I've tied [00:31:00.200] a little popper and also a small little foam spider. They're a great fun to catch, but now, of course, I'm looking for a larger smallmouth.
I wade the river. I try fishing around fallen trees, any structure that I can find. I know as I'm going, I find some pools that, you know, maybe are 3-3.5-feet deep. [00:31:30.519] I try to fish those. I stay out of them. I try to fish along the weed lines but have no success except for catching all these little smallmouth. My question to you is, where else should I look? And I'm assuming if there is a river full of very small smallmouths, there's got to be some larger ones. And how can I find them? Once again, thank you for all the help that you've given us [00:32:00.000] beginner fly fishermen. And I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks again, Tom.
Tom R.: Well, Tom, it sounds like you're fishing all the right places. And the only thing I can suggest is trying different times in the day. Early in the morning or late in the evening, because there should be some bigger smallmouth around. But, you know, the other thing, perhaps where you're fishing is more or less the nursery for the larger fish. You know, the smaller fish [00:32:30.059] may migrate to a certain area of the river, and there aren't many big fish around. So if I were you, you know there's smallmouth there; you know there's young smallmouths; there's going to be larger smallmouths somewhere. So I would look upstream and downstream, most likely downstream of the area you're fishing, because, you know, eventually you will find the bigger smallmouth.
Now, you [00:33:00.019] didn't say how close to one of the Great Lakes. I imagine this river runs into the Great Lakes, and often the bigger smallmouth will enter these streams in the spring and spawn and then drop back into the lake. So if you're close to the lake, I would get closer to the lake, and maybe the big smallmouths have all gone down into the lake for the season. But they should be there in the spring when they're in there spawning.
[00:33:30.339] All right. That is the Fly Box this week. Let's go talk to Bart Lombardo about catching panfish late in the season. Well, my guest today is the great Bart Lombardo, and Bart is, in my opinion, Mr. Panfish. Although Bart loves to fish for trout and lots of other things, he's a panfish expert. And I've had Bart on the podcast before a number of years ago. Right, Bart?
Bart: [00:34:00.880] Yeah, it's been a few years.
Tom R.: Yeah, it's been a few years. But what we want to talk about today is late summer and fall panfishing, because it's often so easy in the spring. You look for the sunfish nests or rock bass in close or whatever you're chasing. They're in shallow. They're really aggressive. And then things change in the summer. They get harder to find and harder to target. It's not [00:34:30.360] always so easy later in the season. So let's talk about the later-season panfishing, Bart.
Bart: Yeah, I mean, you hit that right on the head where a lot of these fish, particularly sunfish, they get the reputation as being food troopers and not a worthy target for an angler, especially a fly fisher. And it's true that in the spring, when they're in the shallows and they're in spawning, the [00:35:00.019] fish are, they're almost suicidal. They'll attack a bear hook if it's put in front of them while they're on a spawning bed. And a lot of anglers, that's the only time that they target these fish because they are so accessible, they are so easy to catch. But once the spawn is done, things change. Water conditions change.
The shallows and many places, if you're fishing in the very far northern range of these fish [00:35:30.179], you may not be experiencing what we experience in the mid-Atlantic where I live and certainly down in the south. Once you get into the warmer months, the shallows, it gets too warm for all but the youngest fish. You know, the young of the year still occupy those shallow water areas. But the larger fish, they tend to seek out cooler water, which in most cases [00:36:00.639] means deeper water. And this is when I think these fish, if you're looking for a challenge, especially if you're targeting larger sunfish, they could be as challenging as any trout living in a blue ribbon trout stream. Fishing can get a little technical for them during the summer months.
So, in the summer, [00:36:30.000] I'm no longer looking for fish in that shallow water, although if you get a stretch of cooler weather like we recently, I don't know what the weather's been like up in New England, but down here in New Jersey this last week has been absolutely gorgeous. We've had nighttime lows in the 50s, sometimes the high 40s, and we've had daytime temps in the 70s. And those cooler temps, those fish have slid a little bit [00:37:00.059] into that shallow water again. But as soon as that water warms up, they're going to slip out into deeper water.
The only exception to that would be early in the morning, first light before things heat up. And sometimes in the evening when the sun gets low in the horizon, they'll kind of drift into the shallows or at least that marginal area where the mid depths, where the shallows kind of meet with the deeper water, and they'll move into those areas to feed [00:37:30.199] in low light conditions when it's a little bit more tolerable for them. But if you're fishing during the day, it's most likely going to be fishing deeper water. And...
Tom R.: And in a big lake, there's a lot of water. And you don't have the shoreline structure. So the first step is finding some bluegills or some pumpkin seeds or shellcrackers or whatever panfish you have. [00:38:00.320] What do you look for?
Bart: So, when you're dealing with large bodies of waters, bigger lakes, and manmade reservoirs, that could be a challenging proposition for panfish, because in a deep, clear lake, those fish they can get pretty deep, almost outside of the range of fly rod anglers.
Tom R.: No kidding.
Bart: Yeah, one of the things that I've done over the years [00:38:30.000] is I've adopted some of the techniques used by stillwater anglers that target trout. In fact, a great resource for someone looking to try some of these deeper water techniques is the Orvis Guide to Stillwater Trout Fishing by our buddy Phil Rowling.
Tom R.: Right. Yeah.
Bart: Yeah, his book has a wealth of information on [00:39:00.059] rigging up to target fish that are holding in deeper water. And by deeper water, we're talking water deeper than 6 to 8 feet. We try to get it into water that's 15, 20-feet deep. And stillwater trout anglers, they routinely target trout at those depths in stillwaters. And a lot of the techniques that anglers use for stillwater trout, they can be adapted to target panfish [00:39:30.340] in the same type of situation where we're looking for these fish in deeper water.
Now, unlike trout that can tend to kind of roam about, you're not going to find panfish doing that, although they do occasionally will suspend. They're more likely to be found around structure. That structure, such as weed beds and deep water, fallen trees, and standing timber. [00:40:00.139] That structure contains their food, the stuff that they're eating, but it also provides them with protection from predators, which is extremely important for these fish since everything wants to eat a bluegill. So, they have to find themselves in a situation where they can access food, have protection from predators, and still have conditions comfortable enough for them to do what they do.
[00:40:30.219] So, what I like to look for in a large body of water is I'm looking for submerged weed beds, and I'll try and fish the deep water side of these submerged weed beds. I look for steep banks. So if you don't have the luxury of a fishfinder and you're out there either fishing from shore or typically you'd be better off fishing from some sort of watercraft [00:41:00.329] Once we get into these warmer months, because you do have to seek out deeper water, and quite often that type of habitat isn't accessible from the shoreline. So if you can get yourself into a float tube or a kayak canoe or a small boat, you'll be ahead of the game there because at least you'll be able to access that deeper water.
But if you're out there and you don't have a fishfinder, I look for those steep banks because a steep bank that drops down to the water edge in many conditions [00:41:30.300] will continue to be steep beneath the surface of the water. So there'll be deeper water up against that bank. And if you can locate weed beds or blowdown trees or anything, any kind of structure that's going to attract these fish but still have water that's say, at a minimum 6 to 8 feet deep, you're likely going to find plenty of panfish in those areas.
But what I normally do is I'll try and focus my fishing efforts on, [00:42:00.659] smaller bodies of water. They're a little bit more comfortable to fish. So if you have a smaller farm pond that maybe has a maximum depth of 6 to 10 feet, that's kind of a better option to try and pick apart and find that deeper water. And if we're in a body of water that's 6 to 8 feet at its max and the fish are going to be holding those deeper sections, [00:42:30.480] we can target them with a fly rod. We can go down to that depth without too much difficulty. We don't have to get too technical with breakaway indicator rigs or slip indicator rigs or sinking lines. We can target that with either a sink tip or an intermediate line, or sometimes just a very heavily weighted fly on a long leader.
So, smaller ponds [00:43:00.179] may be a little bit easier to locate those late-summer fish. And then there's always the moving water option, which I don't think it's a lot of play. Folks seem to associate panfish most of the time with stillwaters, but most of our cool water and warm water creeks and rivers and streams, they hold really, really good populations of sunfish, different sunfish species. [00:43:30.139] For example, here in New Jersey, the red breast sunfish is the predominant river sunfish, where our bluegills and pumpkin seeds are more often found in stillwaters or very slow springs.
But all of our trout streams here in New Jersey, they all have good populations of red breast sunfish, and those slower, deeper sections of those trout streams are, they're ideal for targeting panfish. And streams [00:44:00.480] and rivers usually run a little bit cooler, so the fish are usually a little bit more active throughout the day and easier to locate. So, focusing on moving water during the warmest time of the year is also an option as well. We could get into specific techniques, however you want to handle this.
Tom R.: Yeah, before we get into techniques, just want to ask you, if you have a stream, maybe the lower end of a trout stream where you suspect there might be some [00:44:30.659] sunfish or rock bass or yellow perch or whatever, what kind of water do you look for in a stream?
Bart: Yeah, so what I'm looking for in moving water situations, I'm looking for, certain sunfish will tolerate current better than others. But generally speaking, you're going to find these fish in the slowest portions of the stream. So the bottom end of our trout streams, [00:45:00.219] the lower portions of our trout streams, up high, they're usually higher gradient, a lot of very close together pools and riffles and runs. And as the river kind of settles out and gets into the lower elevations, the water definitely changes. You'll get these long, deep sections of river where the current slows down. And those kind of areas are ideal. You can find [00:45:30.079 ] a shaded bank with a little bit of depth up against the bank, like an undercut bank. And you got some shade on the water and you got a foot or two in depth right up against the shoreline there. As long as you have slow current, you're going to find sunfish that are out there.
I target a lot of our trout streams here in New Jersey, the lower ends of them. And basically what [00:46:00.079] I'm looking for, I'm looking for those deeper, slower sections. Certainly you want to concentrate on the pools deep that you find. You're likely going to find sunfish on the kind of tail outs of those pools where the water is a little bit shallow and slow moving. You'll certainly find them in some of the deeper sections, though it may be a little bit difficult to get your flies down to them. But also anything that [00:46:30.539] creates a current break, like a tree blown down into the river or a log jam, anything that's going to create a break in the current, even large boulders, it'll concentrate those fish in those lower current areas.
And we don't see, like most folks that are out there in our...take a typical section of our trout streams now where the water's, we don't really want to fish for trout when [00:47:00.099] the water's super warm like it is. Trout are just barely holding on in a lot of our streams here in New Jersey during the summer. But all of a sudden, these sunfish seem to appear out of nowhere. You don't see these fish during the time that we're out there fishing for trout. But if you were to get out there and target those fish now, all of the slower runs and pools of most of our trout streams here in the state are just loaded with red grass sunfish.
Tom R.: Okay. [00:47:30.119] Great.
Bart: So, basically, you want to sum it up, just kind of, you want to look for slower water. You want to look for a structure that breaks current. These fish do orient themselves very strongly to structures. So if you have weed beds, fallen logs, stuff like that, it's definitely going to attract these fish.
Tom R.: Okay. So let's talk about techniques. Let's talk about lake techniques first or pond techniques, and then what you would do in moving water.
Bart: All right. So for, let's start out with, [00:48:00.840] let's talk about our ponds and lakes. So in ponds and lakes, what I'm typically fishing, if I'm fishing during the day, especially on a bright sunny day like today, I mean, we love to fish on the surface for these guys. One of the reasons that panfish are so attractive as they fish the target with a fly rod is that they love to eat on the surface. And I don't think there's any fly fishing angler [00:48:30.179] out there that doesn't like a surface eat, you know. And that's one of the things I find so attractive about these fish is that they look to eat up on the top.
But on a bright bluebird day like today, they're likely not going to come up out of deeper water and eat those flies on the surface unless there's something going on that brings them up to the surface. If there's an ant fall or maybe a lot of damsle and dragonfly activity or something out of the ordinary that's going [00:49:00.059] to bring them up. So you're going to have to target these fish subsurface. And where do you look for a particular body of water?
I usually start out trying to locate submerged weed beds. So if I can find a submerged weed bed, either by using the electronics I have on my boats and kayaks or just by visibly looking through the water. A lot of times you can see color variations [00:49:30.239] in the water. These dark areas are, they'll be either depending on the clarity of the water, I know a local pond near me, if you drove by it today, you'd see kind of brownish water and then very dark water. And that dark water indicates submerged weeds that are not quite up at the surface. They're a few feet down below the surface. And the lighter water is the pond that doesn't have any vegetation [00:50:00.159] growing in it.
So I'll fish the edges of the weed beds and try and get my flies down as deep as possible. And there's a couple of ways that we can do that. We can fish sinking flies on an indicator and get those flies down vertically deep. And I use two types of indicator systems when I'm fishing, say deeper than 3 or 4 feet that you would normally fish an indicator, say on a trout [00:50:30.099] stream. I may be fishing 6, 8, 10 feet below an indicator on a pond, trying to target these deep-water panfish. So I'll use either a slip indicator rig or a breakaway indicator that will allow me to suspend a fly at a greater depth but still allow me to cast it relatively easy.
But if you are fishing from a float tube or kayak, canoe, small boat [00:51:00.039], a lot of times we don't have to make a really long cast. We can kind of lob a cumbersome indicator rig into the water and stand your boat off a significant...a distance away so you're not right on top of the fish. And just present those flies along the edges of the weed beds, and quite often the fish will pick them up right away because they're eating all day long, but they're just at depth. [00:51:30.380] They're not up on the surface.
Other options are fishing with sinking lines, either an intermediate line, a sink dip line, or even a full sinking line to get those flies down. And one of the things that I do when fishing a sinking line, especially a full sinking line, to keep the flies from fouling on all the debris that is going to be on the bottom of these bodies of water, is I'll fish a floating nymph on a sinking line. So something [00:52:00.139] like a booby fly that the Brits use for their stillwater fishing. I tend to fish a lot of floating dragonfly nymphs. It's a big buoyant nymph that I'll present on a sinking line on a long leader. And I'll get that fly to float up above the bottom, and that fly line brings everything down. So, fishing floating flies on sinking lines is one way to get your flies down to the fish.
[00:52:30.019] But all these techniques, strike detection can be a challenge when you're fishing sinking lines. So it's really important that when you're presenting your flies on these lines, that you're taking all the slack out and you're trying to put yourself with the most direct connection that you have between the rod tip and the flies. So keeping that fly rod low to the surface of the water. Sometimes I even drop [00:53:00.480] it into the water. So there's absolutely no slack in there. And it's you kind of generate a sixth sense of feel to detect these strikes. But once you get the hang of it, it's usually pretty easy to detect when a fish has taken your fly.
Tom R.: Okay. Hey, Bart, before we get into fly patterns, because I'm sure people are going to want some suggested fly patterns, you talk about slip indicator or breakaway indicator. [00:53:30.579] I assume you make these out of standard indicators, right?
Bart: Yeah. So they're going to be kind of hard to find commercially. I think they are... If you search hard enough, I think you can find them. But yeah, I generally just put these kind of rigs together myself. And they're not too difficult to do. I mean, there's a lot of resources out there. If you did a quick search on the [00:54:00.159] Internet for a breakaway indicator or slip indicator rig, you'll find a ton of sources. But again, going back to that "Orvis Guide to Stillwater Trout Fishing," there is a ton of material in that book. I think Phil has an entire chapter dedicated to fishing these type of rigs and setting these type of rigs up. And it's a resource that I relied on since this book came out. It actually was a pretty [00:54:30.159] good source of information for that kind of stuff.
Tom R.: And for people who don't know why you'd want a breakaway indicator, you got maybe 15 or 20 feet between your indicator and your fly, and you're just not going to be able to reel those fish in because...
Bart: Yeah, that's a problem with that.
Tom R.: So you need an indicator that breaks away and slips down when you get a strike.
Bart: I mean, if you were fishing from a boat, you could certainly just put an indicator 15 feet from your flies and [00:55:00.380] throw the whole thing overboard and drift along the weed line, and you're going to catch fish. But then the problem comes; like I said, you're reeling that fish in. Once that indicator hits that first tip top, now the fish are still 15-20 feet away, and what do you do then?
Tom R.: Yeah. Among that.
Bart: So a breakaway indicator is designed to do just that. The indicator is...the line is running up through the indicator, just like a slip indicator would. It's not clamped onto the leader [00:55:30.219] in a permanent way. And once it hits that guide, it'll pop loose and it'll slide down the leader, and it'll allow you to continue to bring that fish into where you can bring it over to the side or put it in the net and get it in your hands. So when you're fishing at depth, you have to use a system like that because you're just going to be too much of a standoff distance between your flies [00:56:00.179] and a fixed indicator.
Tom R.: So how do you make your breakaway indicators?
Bart: So there's a couple. One of the easiest ways to do it is literally just to take an indicator that has a hole running through the center of it. And you can kind of slide it onto your leader. And when you get the depth that you want to set it in, you kind of pull [00:56:30.039] a length of...you almost like... I'm trying to put this procedure into words here. You almost kind of double the leader up into the indicator and you fix like a peg, like a toothpick, or there are actual commercial breakaway indicator rigs that [00:57:00.059] you can purchase. But I generally will just kind of peg that indicator in place with a... I'll double the leader. So there's a double section of leader going through there, and I'll put a toothpick or some other object in there to hold it in place. And then when you give that a sharp rat, the indicator will pull through and dislodge that peg, and the indicator now will [00:57:30.179] slide freely up and down the line.
I don't think I'm describing that clearly enough. I'd say my best advice for someone that was interested because my description here was absolutely horrible, your best bet is just do a quick Google search on a breakaway indicator rig, and you'll find a graphic representation of what I'm talking about [00:58:00.239] that makes sense. But it's basically an indicator that's set up that if you give a sharp tug on the line, whether that tug is from the fish pulling on the other end or sometimes you can give that fly rod a good hard lift, and that'll be enough to break that indicator free and it'll slide freely up and down the line.
Tom R.: Right. Okay. Yeah, we'll let people look that up, but they are hard to... [00:58:30.019] Specific breakaway indicators are hard to find online.
Bart: They are. They are. But you can make your own because there's a number of indicators out there that have a hollow center running through that you thread onto your leader. And you can rig up breakaways with those indicators very, very easily.
There's actually, and I think there's a [00:59:00.000] the last couple of years from my trout fishing, I've been using these Oros leaders or indicators. They're kind of a little globe, and you unscrew them. And there's, I think it's a Thingamabobber that kind of they came out with a very similar type indicator, but it actually could be set up two ways. It could be set up to where it clamps directly onto the line and it holds [00:59:30.119] it in place. And then there's another way you can use the leader. You lay the line in a different slot, and it floats freely up and down the line. So, I've been experimenting with them, and they work pretty well. And that's a commercial option that is out there [inaudible 00:59:50.987].
Tom R.: You can probably use an Oros and not tighten down as much as you normally would. And it would probably be enough to lob it out there, and then when you put some pressure on it, it would slip too [01:00:00.139].
Bart: Yeah, but the problem if you don't tighten them down all the way, they'll often back themselves off, and you end up...
Tom R.: Oh, and then fall apart.
Bart: Yeah, then you end up with two pieces of your indicator floating in the water, and you're out a couple of bucks. Because the downside with these indicators, they're not cheap. I think they're like 10 bucks for three of them. But they do work exceptionally well. And this new model, it's not an Oros [01:00:30.280] model. It does. I won't say it was Thingamabobber that came out with one, and it has the same system that the Oros does that you put the line in a little slot and tighten it down. It locks in place. And then they also have, like, a pass-through slot that the leader will slide; it'll slide through on its own. So it makes a great slip way where you can... And that's what I employ [01:01:00.059] a lot, too. In addition to the breakaways, I'll fish slip indicators where you kind of put a stopper knot on your leader to hold it where you want that leader to end up in its final position. And then, with a heavily weighted fly, it'll pull the leader down through that indicator. And when that indicator hits the stop knot, it stays.
Tom R.: Or you could put a bobber stopper on your leader too. Those little rubber things.
Bart: Yeah, by a stop knot, that's exactly what [01:01:30.039] I'm talking about. You could either tie a big heavy blood knot into your leader or put one or thread one of those bobber stops on there. It'll work the same way.
Tom R.: Okay, great. All right, flies.
Bart: Also...
Tom R.: Oh, no, go ahead. You were going to say something else?
Bart: Yeah, I was. Another way that we can present flies at depth, not extreme depths, but we start talking about dropper rigs. The hopper dropper is real familiar to trout anglers. [01:02:00.400] But in warm water, we have something called a popper dropper.
Tom R.: Yeah, I do that all the time.
Bart: Yeah, so you can suspend a subsurface fly, a nymph, or a wet fly beneath a popper or foam bug, or big terrestrial pattern. And you can...I've fished them 3.5, maybe 4 feet at its max. They're a little cumbersome to cast when they get that long [01:02:30.000], but you can do it if you keep your casting stroke a little slower and you open up that loop a little bit. They're cumbersome to cast.
And that's a great way because sometimes these fish, they may be holding in deeper water, and they may be reluctant to come all the way to the surface on a bright sunny day. But they may meet you halfway and come up into that depth of water that's 3 or 4 feet below the surface, sometimes even 2 feet below the surface [01:03:00.000]. And you could present your sinking fly under a floating fly and fish those same areas, fish those weed beds, fish those blowdowns that have the ends of the trees in deeper water. And those fish will often come up and take that fly, even though it's just a couple feet below the surface instead of right on the bottom.
Tom R.: And you never know when a bass might come along and eat that popper too.
Bart: Exactly. [01:03:30.179] And that's one of the great things about one of the things I love about panfishing is that you routinely have these interactions with these larger predators. Whether it's big chain pickerel or largemouth bass, or smallmouth bass, they'll often be interested in your flies, especially if you're using flies that are a little bit on the larger side for panfish. But often you have the excitement too that sometimes they're [01:04:00.179] very interested in the fish that you hooked yourself. Matter of fact, just this week, I had an interesting experience on a golf course where I had a 5 or 6-pound bass come up and just engulf a good-sized sunfish right at my feet. Quite frankly, it scared the hell out of me. I think I screamed like a little girl when it happened, but it was pretty exciting.
Tom R.: I hope that golf course was a no-trespassing golf course, because that only adds to the excitement.
Bart: [01:04:30.320] Exactly. Well, actually, it's one that I do have permission to fish it. I have to be out there.
Tom R.: That's cheating. That's cheating, Bart.
Bart: It is. It is. But I have to be out there when there are no golfers present, like the last half hour light, or you got to be out there at first light. And you got a really, really short window there to fish these places. But I don't think you'll find better fishing. Some of these golf course ponds can be [01:05:00.159] absolutely insane. And we talked about like flies. These are this time of year insects like grasshoppers are very, very active. We all know how great fishing hoppers on a trout stream is, but we could do the same thing if you have a body of water that has grassy banks, such as a golf course pond, that the fish are very used to seeing hoppers ending up in the water. And a lot of times, [01:05:30.079] fishing a big terrestrial pattern like a grasshopper may be just a ticket to coast one of these fish up from deeper water to come up and grab a great hopper.
Tom R.: Yeah. Fun too.
Bart: Yeah. What I have going on down in my neck of the woods right now for the last couple of years have been spotted lantern flies. So these bugs are all over the place down here, and they don't seem to be as prevalent now as the first couple [01:06:00.099] of years that they showed up. But a lot of the ponds that I fish have a lot of maple trees on the shore, and these insects seem attracted to these maples. And we find them in big numbers. And you get out there late in the afternoon, and these lantern flies are just launching themselves off these trees, and they end up in the water. And I'm catching a lot of big panfish on lantern flies just right now.
Tom R.: [01:06:30.579] Oh, great. Wow. All right. So let's talk about some of the subsurface flies you use...
Bart: Sure.
Tom R.: ...when you're targeting bluegills or sunfish of some sort.
Bart: Yeah. So generally speaking, I try and imitate food that these fish are consuming on a regular basis. Trying to have my flies imitate the aquatic life forms that they're accustomed to seeing [01:07:00.199]. Things like damselfly nymphs, dragonfly nymphs, they're probably my two big go-to nymph patterns. But the great thing about panfish is they're not afraid to go after something that they've never seen before either.
So a lot of your... First of all, just about every nymph in your trout box will take these fish. But if I'm looking to imitate what they're routinely eating and feeding on, I'll fish flies like damselfly nymphs, [01:07:30.239] dragonfly nymphs. So either direct imitations of those particular insects or, you know, wet fly like a Carey Special, that is, you know, it's kind of generic looking. It was originally tied to imitate these kind of insects, but could also pass for a small baitfish if you fish it like a streamer. It could even imitate something like a leech.
So leech patterns, damselflies, dragonflies, [01:08:00.900] small bait fish imitations, they're pretty much my go-to stuff. If I'm fishing under an indicator, then I'm going to kind of drift towards a fly that's going to bring fish in and have a lot of action imparted into it through retrieve. So flies that have features like rubber legs, stuff that's going to, if you're out on the water on a windy day and there's a little bit of surface chop [01:08:30.260], that indicator will bob up and down, and that'll animate a fly with rubber legs down below. So flies like brim killers. And I mean, there's just a whole...there's probably a hundred different fly patterns, panfish patterns that have rubber legs hanging off them. And those are the kind of flies that I'll suspend underneath an indicator. But for casting and retrieving flies, then I kind of will stick to damselfly, dragonfly, [01:09:00.939] leech imitations, stuff like that.
Tom R.: How about beadhead flies? Do you ever suspend those on an indicator? I mean, they get down a little quicker.
Bart: Yeah. No, absolutely, because that beadhead will get those flies down to depth quickly. Sometimes you want a fly that sinks very slowly, but if you're fishing a fly that sinks slowly under an indicator, you're going to miss those takes because you're not going to be on a tight line. The fish will inhale and spit that fly out [01:09:30.100], and you'll never know. If you're fishing a sinking fly, a slow-sinking fly on a naked line, a line without an indicator, and you're maintaining your slack properly, you can often either see by that leader or line twitching or feel the take on a slowly-descending fly.
But under an indicator, you're going to want a fly that gets down quickly. So that's where the beadheads come into play because they're going to get those [01:10:00.079] flies down. And if I am fishing under an indicator and I want to fish a damselfly imitation, I'm going to reach for a balanced fly. So a balanced nymph is going to have a little beadhead that's forward of the eye of the hook. So when at rest that fly, it holds horizontally in the water. It's not going to hold straight up and down. So I fish a lot of balanced flies under indicators, [01:10:30.010] just to give you that...
Tom R.: Yeah. Balanced leeches and balanced damsels.
Bart: Yeah. Balanced leeches, balanced damselflies, because that's going to give you that horizontal profile in the water instead of it hanging up and down vertically.
Tom R.: Yep. Okay. How about flies in moving water? Do you do anything different there, or do you use the same patterns?
Bart: Not much. So now, in moving water, we're going to adopt a lot of the techniques that we use for trout fishing. Because again, [01:11:00.020] fish in moving water are going to act a lot like trout because they're used to seeing their food. In a stillwater environment, the fish are, they're going to react to all kinds of different retrieves. They're going to react to all kinds of different actions imparted by the angler on to the flies. But in stillwater, things change a little bit. And I think in stillwater, just like trout, fish get accustomed [01:11:30.020] to their food being brought to them by the current.
Tom R.: You mean in moving water? You said in stillwater.
Bart: Right. Oh, did I say in stillwater?
Tom R.: Yeah.
Bart: No. So in stillwater, anything's game, but in moving water, I think now we have to get back into using the same kind of techniques that we're using when we're presenting flies to fish like trout because they're used to generally not swimming against the current, [01:12:00.060] generally being brought down on a drag-free drift with the current. So I fish very much like I would fish with trout, except maybe if I'm fishing a popper, I'll let that fly dead drift and give it a twitch and let it dead drift and give it a twitch. If you did that with a mayfly imitation, you'd scare every trout in the pool. But panfish, they're going to be attracted to that movement, but they're not necessarily [01:12:30.640] going to grab a fly that's being dragged upstream.
Tom R.: Okay.
Bart: So I'll fish pretty much the same way I would fish in a trout stream, allowing my flies to drift with the current as naturally as possible, swimming them down and across the current. But yeah, it's very, very similar to the way I would present flies to trout in moving water. I use that same mindset [01:13:00.380] for presenting my flies to these warm water species.
Tom R.: Okay. And how about flies for panfish that tend to be a little bit more small baitfish-oriented, I'm thinking yellow perch, crappie, white bass, white perch? What flies do you like for those?
Bart: We start talking about the minnow we use, and basically all of your sunfish consume small baitfish as well. So I catch some of my biggest bluegill of [01:13:30.000] the year on small streamers. So small streamers like, of course, the classic Woolly Bugger is just as effective on panfish as it is trout. But I'll tie some smaller minnow imitations, and I try to imitate young of the year fish like young bass or young panfish, immature perch [01:14:00.159], as well as the minnow species that are present in both stillwater and moving water. And I do fish a lot of small streamer imitations.
Again, one of my most productive streamers is an imitation of a young sunfish, because this time of year, the shallows are absolutely filled with the young of the year fish that have basically spawned in the...they emerge from their eggs in the spring, and these fish are [01:14:30.140] now an inch, inch and a half long and very easily imitated with the streamers. And all of your minnow-eating fish, of course, are eating fish, fish like crappie and rock bass, and I know we mentioned yellow perch. They tend to this time of year, their diet really transitions almost to an all-fish diet. So small streamers are very, very effective for them.
Tom R.: [01:15:00.319] What size do you make these smaller streamers for those fish?
Bart: So I'm trying to keep most of my panfish streamers are between an inch and 2 inches in length. Two inches being on the big side. And I will tie them, even some of these baby blue small craffer-style streamers, I'll tie them an inch, inch and a half long on a size 10. [01:15:30.319] There's these real short shank minnow hooks that are out there these days. And I think I got a bag sitting here in front of me here because I was just tying some up the other night. So I'm using an Ahrex SA280 minnow hook, and you can get that down to a size 10. It's just a short shank, wide gap, nice stout hook. So it gives the fly a little bit [01:16:00.060] of weight to get it down just on its own without any additional weight. And I'll build a small craffer streamer on that short shank hook, and the end result is about an inch and a half long. And it is the perfect size for panfish.
Tom R.: Do you tie those like you would an EP fly where you fold it back top and bottom and then you get a nice wide profile?
Bart: Exactly. Exactly. Yep, yep, exactly. So you can build [01:16:30.359] that kind of high vertically but narrow width-wise pattern to imitate the body shape of these deeper-bodied sunfish. Yeah, and EP fibers again, that is one of all the stuff that's sitting on my bench right now. That's what I was tying up last night with some baby bluegill imitations. But that's exactly [01:17:00.260] what I was using. I was using the EP fibers because those fibers, it has a little crinkle to it, so it builds a little bit more body in the pattern. So I like to try tying it as sparse as I can to, number one, be easy to cast on light fly rods. But also, they have so much more action in the water when they're tied nice and sparse. And those EP fibers, because of the crinkled nature of the fibers themselves [01:17:30.210], you can really build some bulk without putting a lot of material on the hook. So it's one of the things I reach for often.
Tom R.: I can't tie without EP fiber and trout, saltwater bass.
Bart: Oh, I'm telling you it is such a great material.
Tom R.: Yeah, it is.
Bart: It is such a great material.
Tom R.: So useful.
Bart: I got a bin behind me that I think has every color that they make. But yeah, I lean on it. And sometimes I'll combine just different synthetic fibers. [01:18:00.039] And I'll use craffer, and I'll use these EP fibers, and maybe incorporate some flash in there as well. And I basically build the fly, and I try and match the color schemes of these different fish. And they're very, very effective. I personally think that eyes are a very important trigger on [01:18:30.060] these types of flies.
I mean, if you look at a juvenile bluegill, the head of the fish is just almost all eyes. They seem to grow into their eyes. Their eyes seem larger than they should be. So I try and put very prominent eyes on the fly. So I'll use things like Fish-Skull Fish Masks with the 3D eyes on them. I'll just use 3D eyes [01:19:00.600], maybe with some UV resin. But what I started doing recently was I had an old jungle cock neck, and the neck had a lot of split eyes. And so I started throwing some of my really kind of crappy-looking jungle cock onto these patterns, and I found that they were...
Tom R.: Oh, fancy, fancy, Bart.
Bart: Yeah. Well, then I discovered the synthetic jungle cock that a bunch of different manufacturers [01:19:30.659] are putting this stuff out on the market today. And I had just picked up a bunch of synthetic jungle cock from Semperfli, and they are working fantastic. It gives the fly a classic look, and the synthetic jungle cock is indestructible. Because one of the things that any fly designed for panfish, it's got to be built robustly, because you have the opportunity to catch many [01:20:00.420] fish on a single fly. And sometimes the rattier the fly gets, the better it performs. But in most cases, I want to try and build these flies as durable as possible.
And one of the problems that I have with some of these 3D molded eyes that I'm attaching with resin or adhesives is that fly hits a rock, it bounces off your rod blank on a sloppy [01:20:30.060] cast or hits the sides of the boat. Those epoxy eyes will pop off, and now your streamer doesn't have any eyes anymore. Tying flies with that synthetic jungle cock, that eye stays on there for the life of the fly. It never goes away. So I've incorporated some of that synthetic jungle cock into some of these small panfish patterns. And I'm real happy with the end result. It's kind of a classy-looking fly. And I think [01:21:00.420] the jungle cock is still giving that appearance of an eye, which I feel is so important on these type of patterns.
Tom R.: Yeah. Now, Bart, do you have a website where people can see some of your information and some of your fly patterns?
Bart: Yeah, absolutely. It's Panfish on the Fly.
Tom R.: Panfishonthefly.com.
Bart: Nice and easy to remember. And I actually have a book coming out. I just finished the manuscript. I got the manuscript in the publisher's hands. [01:21:30.340] So we're going through the first total revision right now. That book should be out late '25, early '26.
Tom R.: Oh, great.
Bart: About a third of the book is going to be dedicated to fly patterns. So there's going to be a lot of stuff in there as well.
Tom R.: Cool. Oh, great. I think...
Bart: But yeah, Panfish on the Fly is a great resource for that.
Tom R.: Yeah. I think didn't you ask me to write an introduction or something?
Bart: I did. And we are waiting for... [01:22:00.180] You should get the... Because I know I want to get the manuscript in your hands so you can take a look at it. And so that should be heading your way in a couple of weeks because I'm going through my first revision now with my editor. And once it's in a kind of a workable form where you can get a feel for what the book's going to look like, I'm going to get them to send that up to you. I provided my publisher with all your [01:22:30.000] contact information.
Tom R.: Good. I get an early look at it then.
Bart: You do. The only thing you won't see are the pictures.
Tom R.: Oh, damn.
Bart: Yeah. It's going to be pretty photo intense. And I'm still working on getting the photos into the text. That'll be finished up once I get the final text edited. It's going to be a pretty good-sized book. I think I submitted close to 100,000 words to the editor.
Tom R.: [01:23:00.000] Wow.
Bart: I think our target is 83,000 words, so it's going to be close to a 300-page book when all is said and done.
Tom R.: Cool. I can't wait to see it.
Bart: Yeah. So I'm looking forward to finishing that project. Yes, it's been in the works for a while.
Tom R.: All right, Bart. Well, I think you've given us a good start on going out and chasing those panfish at a time when they're not as easy [01:23:30.220] as they were in the spring. So I want to thank you for all your advice. In fact, I'm going out Tuesday, and I'm going to use some of your suggestions.
Bart: Very good. Very good. Yeah, it is a great way to... And one of the reasons that I kind of promote these fish so much is that if you live in a part of the country like where I do and even... I mean, you can't deny things are getting warmer by the year. [01:24:00.000] And a lot of places that you can trout fish all summer long, that's not the case anymore. Going out to Montana 20 years ago, if someone mentioned, "Who got closure to me?" I'd be, "What the hell are you talking about?" But now it's a common phrase, right? Everybody knows what it means. And so even in the parts of the country that were all about trout, even now [01:24:30.079], they're feeling the pressure of a warmer climate. So we don't have to hang those fly rods up once we get into the warmer months. We just have to change gears and target different species. And panfish are everywhere. I don't care what part of the country you're in.
Tom R.: Yeah. It doesn't matter where you live. You're going to be able to find some, and they'll be close to home. You can fish more often. It just makes so much more sense.
Bart: And it's a great way to introduce new folks to fly fishing.
Tom R.: Oh, yeah.
Bart: [01:25:00.319] Last night, I did a 101 class where we would normally try and do this on a trout stream. This time of year... Or excuse me, it was a 201 where we actually bring folks out on the water. That's what we do. We bring them down to a local pond, and I can get a dozen anglers spread out on the bank, and they're all catching fish. It may not be a glamorous species like a brown trout or a brook trout, but it's a tug [01:25:30.100] on the end of the line. It's a surface eat. It's a lot of fun. And it's just a great way to perfect those fly fishing skills.
And as a guide who focuses predominantly for trout, one of the most difficult things to do is to take an angler that's never fly-fished before and take him out on a trout stream and expect any kind of success, because there's a lot going on. There's moving water. [crosstalk 01:25:55.637]
Tom R.: There is. It's hard. Trout fishing is hard.
Bart: It's hard. [01:26:00.600] And panfishing is easy, and they give you practice on all those essential skills like setting the hook and line handling, and retrieves.
Tom R.: Everything.
Bart: And everything, soup to nuts. So they definitely have a purpose in my book as a teaching aid. If you're just getting started in fly fishing, forget about trout. Try these panfish out. You'll perfect your skills. And when you [01:26:30.039] hit the trout stream, you'll be in a much better place.
Tom R.: Yeah. Don't make them feel like second-class citizens, though. I mean, people should also go out...
Bart: They're not.
Tom R.: ...in search of bluegills and pumpkin seeds and shell crackers for the pleasure of catching them, not just for practice.
Bart: And they are. They are the perfect fly rod fish, in my opinion.
Tom R.: Yeah, they are.
Bart: That sloppy cast that puts down every trout in the pool is like ringing the dinner bell on a pond. Every fish is going to be looking at what was that? [01:27:00.020] And they're a great sport if you fish on a... I'm a big fan of glass rods. I love them for this type of fishing. But you fish a 2, 3, 4 weight rod, these fish will bend that rod to the cork.
Tom R.: They will.
Bart: They're strong, fighting fish. They provide a lot of sport on light tackle. And if you're looking for a challenge, if you're looking for technical fishing, big sunfish are where it's at. [01:27:30.000] I think they're some of the most elusive freshwater trophies. You go into any tackle shop, sports bar where they got a lot of big fish on the wall. There's going to be no shortage of 30-inch brown trout and 40, 50-inch musky, but how many 13-inch bluegills do you see hanging up there around the wall? You don't see them. The fish are out there, but to me, they're kind of the unicorns of freshwater fishing. Everything wants to eat a bluegill, and for it to get 12-inches in length [01:28:00.060], that fish has to be doing something different than the rank and file. And they're not pushovers. They are a...
Tom R.: Nope.
Bart: If you're looking for some technical fishing targeting big panfish on the fly outside of the spawning season, we'll give you all the technical fishing that you can handle.
Tom R.: Yep. Absolutely. All right, Bart. Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And thanks so much for sharing your knowledge with us.
Bart: [01:28:30.659] Yeah, Tom, it's always my pleasure to speak with you, and looking forward to the next time.
Tom R.: All right, Bart. Thanks.
Man: Thanks for listening to the "Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast" with Tom Rosenbeller. You can be a part of the show. Have a question or a comment? Send it to us at