Why I like bluegills

[OldBaldGuy]

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.

[dave in el dorado ca]

hey old bald guy...i'm a middle aged bald guy and i love bluegills too. fact is i love all lepomis species especially green sunfish...thank you for the best heartfelt write-up i've ever seen honoring and paying tribute to (pound for pound) the best fighting genera on planet earth.

[Bruce Condello]

Beautifully stated. Thank you.

[Alex G.]

Rog, i know your love and desire for gillzilla all to well, and that whole article put a smile on my face, I've said it before, and i'll say it again, i wish you well on your quest.... I just hope Kenz or I get it first!

[Bluegill]

Good luck getting that 2lber!!

[Robert Boland]

When I first moved to Georgia (knee deep in bass) in 2003, all I did was fish bass. I was very successful, but after a couple of years I just got completely burned out on bass. I even caught a couple that were 7 pounds, but it was just getting too routine. It was becoming too much like work!

Occasionally I would catch a bluegil on a bass lure by accident, and of course couldn't help but imagine a stringer full of them!

So last week I started fishing for bluegills, catfish, etc. in ponds near my home.
I am really having a ball! My favorite way is from shore (no choice...no boat!) with a thin balsa "pencil" bobber with split-shot to stand the bobber straight up. The gills feel no resistance when they take the bait. I use raw bacon for bait. Bacon stays on the hook for an eternity.....you generally catch about a dozen gills before you have to rebait.

That's a lot cheaper than buying worms!

Another bacon advantage is in the evening you might get a catfish or two just to keep things interesting.

I used a flyrod with poppers when I lived in Wisconsin for gills and crappie (yes, crappie when the Mayflies were hatching) and I could just imagine catching a huge bluegill on a flyrod.
That would be a white-knuckle ride!

[Charles Singleton]

White-knuckle ride, indeed! It's SO fun, I rarely use any other method to challenge the local 'gills. Anything from a #6 popper to a #18 Griffith's Gnat, and the 'gills can go absolutely nuts! I love it!

Hey, OldBaldGuy! Great narrative! Makes me wanna grab my rod (fly, of course), and brave the 47F wx, just to see if I can tempt the 'gills. :-D

[Scott Kershaw]

Unicorn Hunter, excellent write-up! I feel your pain. I feel your joy! Hope to be there the day it happens, OBG!!!

[Steve Crowder]

It's just plain fun, ain't it guys!?!

[Teeg Stouffer]

Hands down the finest work of literary excellence devoted to fish that I've read this year.

[Swoab47]

What a wonderful thing to say about these great fighting fish, and the devoted fishermen who pursue them. I love fishing for bluegills. I fish for them ninety-nine percent of the time that I am out. It doesn't matter if you are catching four inch fish or ten inch fish, fishing with fly gear, spinning gear or through the ice, these fish are simply fun to catch. So lets all give OBG a nice big thank you for writing this great article on these little fish that we love.

[Greg McWilliams]

DIDOS, OLD BALD GUY!!!!!!! A UNICORN HUNTER might be an EASIER FEAT!!!!!!!

[Tony Livingston]

I understand that a single strand of hair from a unicorn's mane is used to tie flies that are utterly irresistible to giant BG...... especially if the fly in question has legs that are fashioned from the eyelashes of the tooth fairy........and has feathers  that came from the Dodo bird....

It's the ardent Bluegiller's most potent weapon... it doesn't sink, OR float..... this fly hovers just millimeters above the water's surface.....it casts over 100' with no added weight......it's completely snag-proof...... the hook is forged from a rare metal found only in meteorites...... it's barbless, yet no BG ever escapes it's grip....... It cannot be swallowed by a BG, it only hooks the corner of their mouth, everytime..... completely indestructible, one fly will last an angler his or her entire lifetime..... I'm very fortunate to have one in my possession, but cannot post a photo because it doesn't show up on film, or digital media.....

 

Geez it's late, I gotta get to bed......