# The bite was HOT!



## TheCream (Mar 19, 2009)

Who cares if they were only bluegills?  Catching a lot of fish on the fly in Ohio in January was fun. I spent all day Saturday working at my buddy's property where we hunt, so on Sunday, rain or no rain, I was ready to find some open water. I went to my favorite local lake, expecting it to be ice-free with all the rain and warm weather...but it still had a light film on it. It may not have been much, but any ice is enough, I guess. I decided it was time to try a nearby public pond for the first time, since I saw that there was no ice over it. I drive by this pond about once a week, and keep saying I need to try it, but never did before yesterday. I decided to go dry-dropper and see if I could find some panfish. I started out with a big #12 elk caddis as my dry/indicator, and a #14 beadhead olive caddis pupa I tied as the nymph. I never dreamed the action could be that fast, those fish were starving. I didn't count, but my conservative guesstimation would have been in the 35-40 fish caught range. Most of them were small, but still fun to hammer fish like this in winter.

First fish of '10










Wonder what got this guy? Turtle?


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## wabi (Jun 14, 2008)

Glad to see someone had some good luck yesterday. 

I tried the local lake, but it was a bit stained (too thick to drink - too thin to plow ) and I had no takers on the few casts I made. Mainly was just trying out my new 6wt rod (okuma) and new fluorocarbon furled leader.


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## Fishaholic69 (Apr 6, 2007)

gills can be a blast!!! especially on the 3wt! glad to see you got some this early in the year!


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## TheCream (Mar 19, 2009)

Now it's going to turn frigid cold again, I think. Nightly lows for the next week will be between 11-25 degrees F...in other words, I'd say the ice is coming back.  Glad now that I struck while the iron was hot!


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## Flyfish Dog (Nov 6, 2007)

Cool report Cream! Have you tried a small Blood Red Yarn Worm yet?


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## Patricio (Feb 2, 2007)

bluegill are fun.


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## Clayton (Oct 7, 2008)

TheCream said:


> Now it's going to turn frigid cold again, I think. Nightly lows for the next week will be between 11-25 degrees F...in other words, I'd say the ice is coming back.  Glad now that I struck while the iron was hot!


Well ya know, the ice is out down in WV, you could totally hit up some trout streams...


bwahah  have you seen the flows!?


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## TheCream (Mar 19, 2009)

Clayton said:


> Well ya know, the ice is out down in WV, you could totally hit up some trout streams...
> 
> 
> bwahah  have you seen the flows!?


By flows do you mean horrors?


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## Clayton (Oct 7, 2008)

TheCream said:


> By flows do you mean horrors?


Aye. For once, I'm thrilled to not have a camp down there to worry about.

That being said, once this all dies down, the elk should hopefully be restructured for us, and hopefully WON'T be scraped clean of fish... the last time this happened was in like '85, right? That being the case, the big fish we're used to might not make it through things like this.

That'd really suck. Oh well, I'm working in Michigan this summer, and I plan to learn a whole new pile of rivers


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## Flyfish Dog (Nov 6, 2007)

The fishs survive well in these floods and sometime you have to start all over looking for new spots since the good holes will more likely be gone. But the good thing is I dont have to wait 2week to clear up. Some of ther higher elevation creeks will be fishable now and the Elk will be good to fish in a few more days. The last major flood was in 96, but 85 floods were bad as it can get though.


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## Fishaholic69 (Apr 6, 2007)

if you like top water fly fishing and don't mind catching gills then just hit up a pond and tie on a basic dry flies, foam bugs, grasshoppers or whatever else and give it a few twitches, wait for the strike then set the hook and hold on!! you can catch multiple fish! have caught 40 plus gills in a day this way. it even started to get old as I was just catch and releasing um and they was tiny. this would be fun if u want your kid to get into fly fishing tho. I don't have any kids yet but I remember my childhood days and I lived for fishing blue gills! I just used a basic zebco and a red/white bobber set up with a worm but i still was hooked all day and night long and have been to this day!


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## TheCream (Mar 19, 2009)

Fishaholic69 said:


> if you like top water fly fishing and don't mind catching gills then just hit up a pond and tie on a basic dry flies, foam bugs, grasshoppers or whatever else and give it a few twitches, wait for the strike then set the hook and hold on!! you can catch multiple fish! have caught 40 plus gills in a day this way. it even started to get old as I was just catch and releasing um and they was tiny. this would be fun if u want your kid to get into fly fishing tho. I don't have any kids yet but I remember my childhood days and I lived for fishing blue gills! I just used a basic zebco and a red/white bobber set up with a worm but i still was hooked all day and night long and have been to this day!


In my experience, the little poppers and panfish-specific surface flies look neat and are fun to fish, but I personally think the smaller subsurface nymph and wet fly patterns are a lot more consistently successful. One of my local lakes I visit a lot has a good population of big gills and redears. I see a guy there a lot that throws small poppers and surface flies, and I'll go dry-dropper with a small beadhead nymph (usually a black hare's ear) and catch twice as many fish. I'm not saying the dries and surface lures don't catch fish, but I do think the subsurface flies catch _more_ fish. My typical results with even small dries are lots of hits, not a lot of hookups. I haven't seen too many panfish yet struggle to get a #14 or #16 nymph in their mouth!


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## allwayzfishin (Apr 30, 2008)

heard from a buddy that the chagrin is fishing and catches are pretty good. deep pools are producing the most fish drifting sucker spawn and streamers[buggers and large bright minnow imitaters]. wish i could get out but school is too involving. if you get out please post some info. thanks. maybe able to get out this weekend.


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