Do you love big bluegill?
Old Bald Guy
Old Bald Guy.
That was his Big Bluegill name. It was also his name on the NEFGA forum that I frequent.
He was also Rog Flanders, but for my purposes here, he's going by OBG.
OBG passed away this week. My tears have finally cleared enough to see this computer screen so I can make a humble attempt to write how I feel about him.
OBG was a true bluegill lover. He also loved people. And he loved people who loved bluegill. OBG loved his family, and the outdoors, and good grammar.
Part of the reason this site exists is that OBG made me realize a couple of years ago that I wasn't the only freak who got fired up over bluegill. I was almost embarrassed sometimes to admit it to people. But OBG had a giant bluegill in his NEFGA avatar and I knew I wanted to be his fishing buddy.
After a few internet messages, OBG arranged his schedule so he could fish my pond. He showed up with his float tube, his fly rod, and his wonderful sense of humor. It rained that morning...there was even some lightning...but OBG and I kicked our tubes around for a couple of hours and nabbed about ten nice master angler sized fish.
Then about a year and a half ago, I launched this site and OBG was one of the very first to sign on.
I begged him to write a story about why he loved bluegill. His effort turned out to be my single favorite piece of writing ever. I've read it many times since then, and every single time I get a chuckle. Partly because of his great writing style, but mostly because his feelings sit right there on his sleeve. Few people can hit a story like this. OBG knocked it out of the park.
I contacted In-Fisherman magazine shortly thereafter, and suggested that they run this little prose in their fine magazine. But they couldn't do it, because it had already been published here on Big Bluegill. I now realize how glad I am that they didn't accept the story, because it's really served best by living forever on this website.
I'm all choked up again so I need to quit, but here's the story, one more time, for all to see.
Like many American males, I have a recurring fantasy.
It usually strikes while I’m sitting at my tying bench, admiring my latest creation through the big magnifying glass on my tying light. Instead of the cluttered, out-of-focus bench top in the background, I see my newest fly gently drifting downward in sparkling water, surrounded by a forest of aquatic plants. Suddenly what I thought had been a shadow materializes just beneath my descending fly. It is the largest bluegill I’ve ever seen. It must be spawning season; his chest and belly are irridescent reddish-orange. Frankengill's pectoral fins slowly fan as he adjusts his position beneath the falling fly. At the last possible second, his lower jaw juts from beneath that massive forehead, and he tenderly sucks the fly into his mouth...
Bruce has asked me to jot down a few thoughts on “why I like bluegills.”
That’s a bit like asking me “why I like the opposite sex,” only even more difficult to answer. I was so young when I started liking bluegills that, at the time, I thought girls were just slow targets for snowballs. Luckily for me, my appreciation of both has done nothing but grow through the years.
Now that’s not to say they both haven’t been the source of some frustration and broken hearts. Especially the bluegills.
It’s well known within the limited circles I travel that my single greatest unfulfilled angling goal – the #1 item on my personal “bucket list” – is to catch a 2-lb. Nebraska bluegill on my fly rod.
In theory, it’s possible. The Nebraska record – now 31 years old – is a 2 lb., 13 oz. monster caught at Grove Lake in the northeastern part of the state. A bait fisherman caught it on a nightcrawler. Some of the sandhills lakes on the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in northcentral Nebraska have given up numerous two pounders – usually through the ice. Further west, two lakes named Smith reportedly harbor giant gills. I was at one of them just last spring and heard several folks in the campground talk about the two-pounder a fellow had caught only a few days before I’d arrived. “It wouldn’t lie flat in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket,” one guy insisted. But they all agreed the lucky fisherman took it home in that bucket and ate it.
Eastern Nebraska, where I live, has hundreds and hundreds of private farm ponds, and a shocking number of them shelter bluegills bigger than dinner plates, if you can believe the stories I’m told. An interesting coincidence is that none of these storytellers knows how to obtain permission to fish the particular pond he describes.
If the first prerequisite for catching a two-pound bluegill is to fish waters where they live, I’ve been doing my part. My little Tacoma pickup has racked up 1,500-2,000 miles each of the past three summers in my search for Moby Gill, without ever leaving the state. I also read everything I can find about bluegills – both popular and scientific literature – and I’m always looking for more. If you Google “bluegill+fly,” you get 270,000 hits. I have a few left to read. I’ve no doubt the missing piece of the puzzle is hidden in some obscure paper by an under-appreciated graduate student, and I’ll recognize it when I see it.
The trail has had some curious dead ends. For example, few people apparently recognize the relationship between Girl Scouts and big bluegills. I was advised last year that a particular Girl Scout camp in Nebraska has a pond where the bluegills are “huge,” and “nobody fishes there except for a couple of weeks in the summer.” Then, not six months later, I heard almost exactly the same story about a Girl Scout camp in western Iowa. Where were these tipsters 15 years ago when my daughter was 12, living at home, and might have been coerced into joining a troop?
Why bluegills for me? Why not crappie, or largemouth bass, or trout, or another game fish? Part of it is I’ve already had my quota of luck with some of them. My “bass-of-a-lifetime” is hanging on the wall above my tying table. I’m unlikely to ever catch a bigger crappie than I did 30 years ago, drowning minnows one Sunday afternoon off the end of the family dock. But despite numerous one-pounders, I’ve never caught a 1.5-pound bluegill, let alone a two.
I suppose the biggest reason I love bluegills is their spunk. You can see it in their face, with that protruding, Marciano-like lower jaw. I’ve caught enough one-pound ‘gills to know that any of them, if linked tail-to-tail with a bass twice his size, could pull Mr. Bass backward. In circles. And that’s the other reason. I love the circles and twists a bluegill scribes when he realizes the bug he’s bitten isn’t real. A crappie, when hooked, shrugs his slender shoulders and lays over on his side. A bluegill downshifts, accelerates, and does the piscatoral equivalent of a Porsche on a hairpin mountain road. So many times I’ve set the hook, thrilled to obvious weight at the end of the line, then be disappointed as yet another two- or three-pound bass makes a short sprint in a straight line. In those few seconds, a big bluegill would have made seven left turns and two rights.
I’m going to keep looking for my two-pound bluegill. But I’ll tell you this: if there’s anything to reincarnation, when I come back I want something a lot easier for my obsession. Unicorn hunter would do.
That was his Big Bluegill name. It was also his name on the NEFGA forum that I frequent.
He was also Rog Flanders, but for my purposes here, he's going by OBG.
OBG passed away this week. My tears have finally cleared enough to see this computer screen so I can make a humble attempt to write how I feel about him.
OBG was a true bluegill lover. He also loved people. And he loved people who loved bluegill. OBG loved his family, and the outdoors, and good grammar.
Part of the reason this site exists is that OBG made me realize a couple of years ago that I wasn't the only freak who got fired up over bluegill. I was almost embarrassed sometimes to admit it to people. But OBG had a giant bluegill in his NEFGA avatar and I knew I wanted to be his fishing buddy.
After a few internet messages, OBG arranged his schedule so he could fish my pond. He showed up with his float tube, his fly rod, and his wonderful sense of humor. It rained that morning...there was even some lightning...but OBG and I kicked our tubes around for a couple of hours and nabbed about ten nice master angler sized fish.
Then about a year and a half ago, I launched this site and OBG was one of the very first to sign on.
I begged him to write a story about why he loved bluegill. His effort turned out to be my single favorite piece of writing ever. I've read it many times since then, and every single time I get a chuckle. Partly because of his great writing style, but mostly because his feelings sit right there on his sleeve. Few people can hit a story like this. OBG knocked it out of the park.
I contacted In-Fisherman magazine shortly thereafter, and suggested that they run this little prose in their fine magazine. But they couldn't do it, because it had already been published here on Big Bluegill. I now realize how glad I am that they didn't accept the story, because it's really served best by living forever on this website.
I'm all choked up again so I need to quit, but here's the story, one more time, for all to see.
Like many American males, I have a recurring fantasy.
It usually strikes while I’m sitting at my tying bench, admiring my latest creation through the big magnifying glass on my tying light. Instead of the cluttered, out-of-focus bench top in the background, I see my newest fly gently drifting downward in sparkling water, surrounded by a forest of aquatic plants. Suddenly what I thought had been a shadow materializes just beneath my descending fly. It is the largest bluegill I’ve ever seen. It must be spawning season; his chest and belly are irridescent reddish-orange. Frankengill's pectoral fins slowly fan as he adjusts his position beneath the falling fly. At the last possible second, his lower jaw juts from beneath that massive forehead, and he tenderly sucks the fly into his mouth...
Bruce has asked me to jot down a few thoughts on “why I like bluegills.”
That’s a bit like asking me “why I like the opposite sex,” only even more difficult to answer. I was so young when I started liking bluegills that, at the time, I thought girls were just slow targets for snowballs. Luckily for me, my appreciation of both has done nothing but grow through the years.
Now that’s not to say they both haven’t been the source of some frustration and broken hearts. Especially the bluegills.
It’s well known within the limited circles I travel that my single greatest unfulfilled angling goal – the #1 item on my personal “bucket list” – is to catch a 2-lb. Nebraska bluegill on my fly rod.
In theory, it’s possible. The Nebraska record – now 31 years old – is a 2 lb., 13 oz. monster caught at Grove Lake in the northeastern part of the state. A bait fisherman caught it on a nightcrawler. Some of the sandhills lakes on the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in northcentral Nebraska have given up numerous two pounders – usually through the ice. Further west, two lakes named Smith reportedly harbor giant gills. I was at one of them just last spring and heard several folks in the campground talk about the two-pounder a fellow had caught only a few days before I’d arrived. “It wouldn’t lie flat in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket,” one guy insisted. But they all agreed the lucky fisherman took it home in that bucket and ate it.
Eastern Nebraska, where I live, has hundreds and hundreds of private farm ponds, and a shocking number of them shelter bluegills bigger than dinner plates, if you can believe the stories I’m told. An interesting coincidence is that none of these storytellers knows how to obtain permission to fish the particular pond he describes.
If the first prerequisite for catching a two-pound bluegill is to fish waters where they live, I’ve been doing my part. My little Tacoma pickup has racked up 1,500-2,000 miles each of the past three summers in my search for Moby Gill, without ever leaving the state. I also read everything I can find about bluegills – both popular and scientific literature – and I’m always looking for more. If you Google “bluegill+fly,” you get 270,000 hits. I have a few left to read. I’ve no doubt the missing piece of the puzzle is hidden in some obscure paper by an under-appreciated graduate student, and I’ll recognize it when I see it.
The trail has had some curious dead ends. For example, few people apparently recognize the relationship between Girl Scouts and big bluegills. I was advised last year that a particular Girl Scout camp in Nebraska has a pond where the bluegills are “huge,” and “nobody fishes there except for a couple of weeks in the summer.” Then, not six months later, I heard almost exactly the same story about a Girl Scout camp in western Iowa. Where were these tipsters 15 years ago when my daughter was 12, living at home, and might have been coerced into joining a troop?
Why bluegills for me? Why not crappie, or largemouth bass, or trout, or another game fish? Part of it is I’ve already had my quota of luck with some of them. My “bass-of-a-lifetime” is hanging on the wall above my tying table. I’m unlikely to ever catch a bigger crappie than I did 30 years ago, drowning minnows one Sunday afternoon off the end of the family dock. But despite numerous one-pounders, I’ve never caught a 1.5-pound bluegill, let alone a two.
I suppose the biggest reason I love bluegills is their spunk. You can see it in their face, with that protruding, Marciano-like lower jaw. I’ve caught enough one-pound ‘gills to know that any of them, if linked tail-to-tail with a bass twice his size, could pull Mr. Bass backward. In circles. And that’s the other reason. I love the circles and twists a bluegill scribes when he realizes the bug he’s bitten isn’t real. A crappie, when hooked, shrugs his slender shoulders and lays over on his side. A bluegill downshifts, accelerates, and does the piscatoral equivalent of a Porsche on a hairpin mountain road. So many times I’ve set the hook, thrilled to obvious weight at the end of the line, then be disappointed as yet another two- or three-pound bass makes a short sprint in a straight line. In those few seconds, a big bluegill would have made seven left turns and two rights.
I’m going to keep looking for my two-pound bluegill. But I’ll tell you this: if there’s anything to reincarnation, when I come back I want something a lot easier for my obsession. Unicorn hunter would do.
Views: 400
Comment
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Comment by Magnolia Rick on May 25, 2010 at 2:25pm
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nice read thanks Bruce
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Comment by shooter on January 2, 2010 at 7:30am
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man i feel your loss,but OBG can fish for the next million yrs if he wants to.
"And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men."
"Eventually all things merge into one and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs."
as long as you remember him he will live on through you,that is what friends are really for.
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Comment by Jim Knott on October 31, 2009 at 10:02pm
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Reading this guy's story makes me wish I could catch a fish, but even more, catch a Bluegill ...... he makes it sound exciting to go fishing .... wish I would have known him when I was younger, maybe I would have a different view of fishing by now :-)
I'm sorry to hear that he's no longer around to inspire people to go 'gilling,' and sorry for the loss of those who knew him.
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Comment by Farm Hunter on October 2, 2009 at 4:38pm
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so sorry to hear.....thanks for re-postng the story Bruce.
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Comment by Erik on September 9, 2009 at 9:02pm
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Thanks Bruce for your tribute to OBG. I too knew him from NEFGA. He will be deeply missed on both of these sites. He touched and mentored many in the fishing world and was a one of a kind. I wish I could have spent some time with him in the great outdoors of Wyoming's high country chasing trout on a fly rod or on a little pond in Nebraska after some 2IB. gills. My prayers are with him and his family. The private messages I have received from him will remain in my inbox to remember the person he was and help me be a better person myself!
RIP OBG
Your friend,
Erik
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Comment by Bruce J Miller on September 9, 2009 at 12:30pm
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I have been away up north in WI. OBG had a gifted pen indeed. My condolences to his family and to you Bruce.
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Comment by bluegillboogieman on September 7, 2009 at 6:53am
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I never knew the OBG, but hopefully, if he does come back, it'll be as a 5lb 13oz Mobygill. May he give a bunch of us BBGers the thrill of our lives, till he breaks all of our lines.
Boogieman
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Hi Bruce, I'm still pretty new to the site, but I want to add my condolences to you about a great man, who loved life and fishing for gills. I never had the pleasure to read any of his posts either until I read the the above story. What a great tribute!! This man must have been a fella after our own hearts when it came to our type of fishing.
First time I've ever really been choked up about a man and his story. Nick
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Comment by Kiana Fitzpatrick on September 3, 2009 at 9:50am
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He will be missed....I only knew him thru here, but I loved his posts....great tribute Bruce! I'm sure he's tying one on right now in the sky and fighting with those gill looking down on us and laughing because he finally has his 2 pounder up there!!! Fish On OBG
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Comment by John Sikkila on September 3, 2009 at 8:56am
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Being somewhat new to the site I never really met Old Bald Guy but it sure would have been an honor to do so....It sounds like he lived a good ,honest, fulfilling life.....hopefully we all can say the same when we approach "the end of the road"...He had a "way with words"....as we all can see from his writings.....He truly was a special gifted person in life.... and one heck of a "giller"....My thoughts go out to his family and friends.....
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