Have I mentioned how much I love bluegill?

[ditchbanker]

Today was just warm enough to be one of the few days I've fly fished without my guides icing up. I called up my dad and we decided to not let cold weather keep us down and headed to a local pond. The bluegill at the pond were right where I've usually found them to be in the winter.

I know that bluegill have a stigma as being just a kid fish, but my dad and I had a great time. They're so stinking aggressive, they go for all kinds of flies. My dad was getting the bigger 'gills on nymphs slowly retrieved and I was getting a greater number of smaller fish with a surface fly and jerky retrieves. They fight great for their size, provide tons of action and reproduce so quickly that I had no moral problem with keeping all of the fish that were big enough to be worth dulling a knife on. We only kept 8 between us, but easily caught two dozen in a few hours. My wife brought our son down after his nap and he admired our catch.



And tomorrow night I get to enjoy



We also caught a couple little Large mouths that we didn't get any pictures of.

All in all, a pretty good day for January.
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