Welcome to The Bluegill Pond

On last week’s trip to the stream, Queen Anne’s Lace and the delicate blue flowers of Chicory waved in the breeze as I pulled on wet wader socks and boots. An 8½-foot 4wt. rod was chosen to deliver size-10 streamers on a slow sinking intermediate line. A tall, heavily...

The bullfrog chorus heralded my arrival at a favorite pond. I assembled an 8 wt. under heavily overcast skies and knotted a size-2 olive Bully’s Diving Frog to 12-lb. tippet. From my float tube, I side-armed a skip-cast that landed the fly under an over-hanging willow...

Many fly fishers rely on only one hook-setting method, yet most fish species feed in different ways depending upon their distance from the prospective meal and the size and species of their prey. Most long-rodders use the “lift-set” method, which requires the angler...

A  Kingfisher clattered its annoyance as I stepped into the clear waters of a favorite stretch of river. I hoped to encounter some aggressive sunfish and possibly some smallmouth bass while casting my 8½-foot 3wt. Several rises convinced me to knot a Sponge Spider to...

As an enthusiastic consumer of all things flyfishing, I am regularly amazed at the streamside (or pondside) philosophers that endeavor to explain why we choose the flyrod.  Some describe our efforts as a sport that implies competition. Surely our lives, even including...

Another round of frog-choking rains postponed my quest to wade my beloved smallmouth streams. I packed my float tube and both  8wt and  4wt  outfits to fish a favorite pond to console myself. My despair was short-lived. To the business end of the 8wt  floating line...