A corn-colored tinsel-tail fly fooled this hefty bluegill into biting. Sometimes flies are the best way to catch farm pond panfish. Photo by Robert Sloan

David Jenkins drove the old truck across the bumpy field to a nondescript looking pond in the middle of nowhere. "It might not look like much, but you might be pleasantly surprised at what lurks beneath its surface," said Jenkins, a long-time friend, and an ace at catching bluegills and other assorted members of the panfish family.

We sat on the tailgate of the pickup and rigged our fly rods. I had taken along a 2-weight rod, while Jenkins had a 4 weight. The 2-weight, three-piece fly rod is a personal favorite of mine. It's been used to catch everything from big rainbow trout to small sunfish. Even the smallest fish put up a pretty good battle on a 2-weight rod.

I tied on a No. 10 white cork-bodied popper with four rubber legs and a chartreuse tail made of marabou. Jenkins opted to tie on a black sponge spider with orange legs.

"That looks like something you would see on Halloween," I said.

"Well," Jenkins replied, "you never know what a fickle bluegill is going to take. But this has been a good color pattern for early in the summer."

The pond was no more than one acre in size. The water was semi-clear, and there was ample structure along the bank, such as brush and some assorted aquatic vegetation.

I cleared about 30 feet of line off the reel, made a simple double haul and laid the popper gently on the water's surface, about 10 feet off the bank. I didn't even have time to twitch the fly before a fat, hand-sized 'gill sucked the fly under.

"With the water as cool as it is right now they will be feeding on the surface for at least a couple of hours," Jenkins said. "Then as the sun gets up, we'll have to go deeper."

We worked that little pond hard and caught about 25 big bluegills each. My popper worked fine, but seemed to catch smaller fish than the spider Jenkins was using.

"I think the bigger 'gills prefer something that looks like the real thing," he said. "From now until the first frost in the fall, we'll have lots of insects on the water."

Fickle is the key word when talking about catching bluegills. I've seen days when they would pounce on a tiny cork-bodied popper, while passing on a good imitation of a cricket of grasshopper.

The early-morning hours are absolutely the best for taking numbers of big bluegills with surface flies. As the sun gets up, that bite will wane. That's when you can go with a slow-sinking worm pattern or even a nymph pattern. Later on in the day, the sun will heat up the shallows. That's when you'll want to tie on a beadhead Woolly Bugger, ant or slow-sinking worm.

The early bite is my personal favorite. There is nothing quite like seeing a big bluegill crash into a tiny popper. The early bite is when you'll catch sunfish in various sizes, but the action will invariably come from big bluegills.

A Gaines popping bug is without a doubt the best all-around fly for taking 'gills at first light. They are made in a variety of sizes, but the No. 8 through 10 sizes seem to be the best producers. The Sneaky Pete and the Pan Pop flies produce in just about any morning situation.

The Pan Pop will be best when the water's surface is slick as a mirror. This is a fly with a flat face, four rubber legs protruding from its sides, and two sticking out the rear. Its tail is made of marabou. When twitched, it'll make a slight plopping noise. When twitched and allowed to rest a few seconds, this fly is deadly. The rubber legs will undulate, and the marabou tail will flutter. It's not at all unusual to have this type of fly blasted when it's sitting dead still in the water.

The Sneaky Pete is a balsa, cone-head fly with a set of rubber legs similar to the Pan Popper. It also has a marabou tail. The big difference is that the shape of the head on this fly makes it dive when twitched. It's a great one to tie on when a breeze ripples the water's surface.