Favorite Bluegill Fly?

[Ron Kruger]

Mine is a weighted black fur ant. I know small poppers are most popular, but I'm convinced I can catch more and bigger panfish with something that sinks.

[Mark Stine]

  Ron your black fur ant is great and what a nice string!  A popper with dropper rig best of both worlds. I use the epoxy ant a lot, mostly as a dropper under my popper and it catches a lot of fishl  I also am very fond of the chernobyl ant, the predator fly, and the zug bug guess my favorite changes a lot to match which ever one the fish are biting today. 

[Ron Kruger]

I haven't fished a dropper off a popper for at least 30 years. Worked great, and the popper served as a strike indicator before I learned to watch the end of the fly line, but I quit using it because of bothersome tangles.

[Andy is OptiMystic]

Same issue for me. When I see how popular droppers are, I wonder if I am doing something wrong.

[Steve Wilson]

  Good lookinn ant Ron

[Andy is OptiMystic]

When I moved here from CO I had a box full of flies, mostly nymphs; in fact mostly GRHE because that was my fly out there. It turns out gills like those a lot also. I snipped the bottom of the wing case on some to fish them as an emerger but the fish didn't really seem to care. Anyway, little nymphs are pretty hard to beat for raw numbers of fish but the drawback is that even the 3" fish take them

[Bruce Tomaselli]

I feel the same way when I'm fishing for trout. It seems I catch the smaller fish on top. But there is a certain thrill to watching your fly being taken in the surface film. 

I'm going to try the dry/dropper method for the bluegills this year.

Nice stringer of fish.

[carl hendrix]

i also use a dropper on a popping bug;; either a red ant;; or a really small jig ( Allan Morgan made some up just for me; then they were shown last year on a mid west fishing tv show!!)  both are extremly deadly on gills.  quite often- i catch two gills at a time.  a bream killer- is another excellent dropper type to use.

[carl hendrix]

and actually;; i just have to many favorites to say; its my favorite one to use!!  Dick Tabberet sent me several black crickets that are awsome to use;; as well as several others he gave me.  then there;s Allan Morgan;s muddler minnows that were outstanding as well !!  tooty;s silent stinger;s work extremly well;;  then my rascal bugs!! i generally keep 3 to 5 rods rigged up- with different types; and colors;;  let the fish decide what they want!!  at that time-- that one is my favorite to use

[Ron Kruger]

I've found bluegill in general are partial to black.

[Allen Morgan]

Black, brown, various shades of green, etc.  "Natural" colors.  Make it small and buggy looking, and yes, the 'gills will hammer it.

[Slip Sinker]

the orange foam spider with white legs... its been on my fly rod for two years after catching a personal best 9.8" male bull gill on my first day of fly fishing on a setup that was hours old. 

[Steve C]

These are my top three producers. L to R,  Jitterbees for ponds/lakes, Briminators in streams and Teeny nymphs for ponds/lakes.  

The Teeny nymph is a killer when the gills get that mode where they are just nipping at the tails of the flies.