Pantastic Part II

Woke up this morning to quite the storm rolling through.. Waited it out and then headed to FleetFarm to pick up some size 8 Aberdeen hooks to tie up some more foam panfish flies.. Today's tie of choice was foam spiders..

Got down to the local lake with my 2wt in hand around 11am.. Temp was somewhere in the low-mid 60's... Not much wind and pretty overcast still from the storm system in the area.. But the sun was peaking out here and there.  Decided to check another spot on the lake today as I knew where they definitely were already from yesterday's outing.  Well needless to say.  The panfish are everywhere.. The one difference.. Size.  They were definitely bigger overall yesterday.  Lot more dinky guys today.  Which was kind of a surprise.. Since I'm use to catching pretty big panfish on this shore as well.  Bass were moving in too to start spawn and were making things rather annoying.  And then there were the carp cruising also... They definitely were not feeding.. Just dispersing the bluegills every time they all came through...

It was a nice day.. Caught plenty of bluegills and dinky bass.  Switched things up from the spider back to a black mini-bugger and back to the spider when the sun would come back out.. Seemed they were more willing to take the spider when the sun was beating down.. And when it was overcast.. They much preferred the bugger.  Even the spider trailed with a nymph took a couple bluegills.  Ended up forgetting the bucket. So I didn't take home any to fry up today.. But I'm sure I'll have no problem getting a meal in the days and weeks to come.

Pannies on the fly

Today started out with the normal problem I often see myself faced with... Where and What do I want to fish for?   Since gas and money are on the low end of the scale right now.. and since the sun was shining high.. I figured today would be a great day to catch some pannies on good ol' Lake Winona..  Pannies are still in spawn on the lake.. the last couple weeks of cold weather probably forced them back down deep and held off on their spawning pattern.., It was easy pickins... Tied a popper onto my fly rod and I was tying into the pannies for 3 hours until I filled a hefty limit.. Boy are panfish a hoot when you are using a popper on a fly rod.. You really get to see the true aggression of these little guys as you see their wake as they zip across the water to pounce on that popper.. And not only are they entertaining to catch on the fly.. But they are delicious as well...