Welcome to The Bluegill Pond

It’s my good fortune to have “double-header” rivers nearby. These are streams fed by large springs that are cool enough to support trout, while other sections of the same rivers host a variety of warmwater species. Most anglers are attracted to the trout water, while...

A heavy blanket of dark clouds draped over the river valley as a chilly north wind pushed dead leaves across the gravel bar and swept an armada masquerading as sailing ships downstream. The water that swirled around my waders caused me to shiver. The river and,...

Crappies have more aliases than a convention hall full of career criminals. Calico, chinquapin, lamplighter, and ol’ silversides are but a few of the nearly 60 colorful monikers we’ve encountered over the years. Imagine the surprise I felt when I was invited to fish a...

Autumn is a time of movement for riverine smallmouth bass. This migration may be a relatively short distance or many miles, and while the largest percentage of bass move downstream, a significant number migrate upstream. Their purpose is to locate suitably deep water...

Recent cool over-nights may have induced crappies, or sac-a-lait in the Cajun vernacular, to migrate from the reservoirs into the rivers to feed before winter. To find out, I waded downstream to a long pool with multiple deadfalls armed with a 5wt rod, intermediate...

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...