

In brighter colors, such as yellow and red, it’s definitely in the attractor-pattern column. Tied in dark colors, it might imitate a dragonfly nymph. Its Woolly Bugger heritage is hard to miss, but it is heavily palmered and comes with a brightly colored-most commonly red-yarn tail instead of a long trailing sprig of marabou. The Wooly Worm is about as unsexy a fly as you can find, but this old-timer will simply stack up suspended bluegill.

These hefty flies are great for crayfish predators like warmouths and shellcrackers, and they really stand out when waters are stained a bit from a big spring rain. The black-orange contrasting color scheme is definitely a big-fish attractor, and the fat, buggy profile looks like a 3-course perch meal in one chomp. I don’t think a shellcracker knows a stonefly from a box of Cracker Jack, but deep-feeding panfish crunch on Bitch Creek nymphs like candy. The white rubber tail and antennae twitch enticingly as the belly flashes orange like a big stonefly.

Foam SpiderĪnother panfish fly borrowed from trout anglers, the Bitch Creek imitates a stonefly nymph crawling towards the water’s edge. Paired with a 3-weight or 4-weight fly rod, they’ll give you as much fun as you can have on a farm pond or local creek. The biggest bass I ever caught-a 10-plus pounder, according to onlookers-took a size 8 white Woolly Bugger I was fishing around crappie structure.Ī few colors and sizes of each of these flies will fit in a single fly box small enough to fit in your back pocket. Even when they’re posted up in deeper holes and creek channels, panfish will smack the right weighted nymph or attractor pattern, so this isn’t just a topwater game. Panfish in farm ponds, lake coves, and creeks and rivers are prime targets for fly anglers, especially in the pre-spawn and spawning periods that fall around the full moons of spring and early summer.

The panfish category is a catch-all class of fish that takes in bluegill, redbreast, redears, greens, longears, warmouth, perch, crappie, and possibly even rock bass-if by panfish you mean a fish that rarely grows so large it won’t fit in a skillet. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs.
