Welcome to The Bluegill Pond

A cooling Northwest breeze fueled my hope for encountering surface-feeding bluegills in a weed-line encased pasture pond. I planned to fish a size-8 Rat-Faced McDougall fly created by Catskill fly tying legend Harry Darbee in the 1930s. Darbee’s dry fly has a a...

From the comfort of a bankside log, I listened to the deafening buzz of crickets and katydids while searching my flybox for the magic offering that might resurrect a fruitless search for smallmouth bass. I knotted a size-8 weighted Muddler Minnow with 3X tippet and...

Some describe the instant of the hook-set on a sizeable surface feeding largemouth bass as the most exciting split-second in all of sports. I’m one of them. That moment initiates a violent explosion of whitewater infused with bits of weeds and moss followed by a...

Long shadows stretched across the river as the towering ridge above glowed in fading, golden light. A thumping strike bounced the 5-weight’s tip before arching the rod as the 15-inch smallmouth bass bore into the murky current. Three memorable leaps and a strong run...

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...