Are there any Panfish Flyfishermen out there

[Baron]

Well that is pretty cool Jerry. I wish I had time or inclination to tie. Truth is that the learning curve alone I allot for an old fart like me. Once Sumer comes and the spawning is over will the Crappie disperse into individuals or will they remain in schools?
How do you protect from pickerel. What type of tippet do you use or am I making too much of this. I usually use a 4x mono or 3x floro.

 

[Dave_W]

Baron wrote:
Once Sumer comes and the spawning is over will the Crappie disperse into individuals or will they remain in schools?
How do you protect from pickerel. What type of tippet do you use or am I making too much of this. I usually use a 4x mono or 3x floro.

When spawning ends, most panfish, especially the larger ones, will move to deeper water. This is why I rarely pursue them in summer on lakes. They still tend to school, but are often suspended and can be hard to locate, even with top electronics in one's boat. This is not always true as some panfish stick to shoreline cover and weeds in summer, but they tend to be small.

If you're specifically targeting pickerel, you can use a a short wire leader when FFing. I prefer a long shanked streamer and 14lb fluorocarbon for pickerel.

Panfish can be line shy, especially big bluegills in clear water lakes that get pounded by ice anglers. In this case, heavy floro or wire will spook 'em. You'll have to decide which species you mainly want to target.

 

[Baron]

Perhaps It'll be fine with say 1x or 2x tippet as a bite leader and it won't affect bluegill too much

 

[Baron]

Dave, the guy I met yesterday said that the crappie bite all summer only 2' from the surface. The lake is only 6' deep and they've nowhere to go except they follow the schools of baitfish around. So he said you can catch them all year without the aid of fish finders and sonar like you would need in deep lakes.
Could he be right?

 

[Dave_W]

Baron wrote:
Perhaps It'll be fine with say 1x or 2x tippet as a bite leader and it won't affect bluegill too much

Sure - try 1X or 2X floro and the panfish will probably still bite and this will give you some protection from pickerel teeth as floro is more resistant to cutting than monofilament.

 

[Dave_W]

Baron wrote:
Dave, the guy I met yesterday said that the crappie bite all summer only 2' from the surface. The lake is only 6' deep and they've nowhere to go except they follow the schools of baitfish around. So he said you can catch them all year without the aid of fish finders and sonar like you would need in deep lakes.
Could he be right?

Yes, he certainly could be right.

In such a shallow lake you could certainly target panfish all year with FF gear.

In a case such as this one with crappies near the surface chasing minnows, I'd take some time to watch the lake surface in the morning or evening as you may be able to see swirls and other disturbance as the crappies chase the minnows.

 

[Baron]

Here is a quandary: I was fishing just outside the stumpy flats in the shallow end of the lake. There were round swirls, obviously schools, here and there all over. now and then you'd see a head and it appeared to be perch. When I would cast through the swirls I didn't catch anything. The perch and pickerel hits came well outside the swirls.

Were those swirls actually the baitfish? Is that why I didn't get hits inside the swirls? Were the predator (in this case Pickerel and perch) herding the baitfish into these circular schools?

I caught this nice Pickerel on 4lb test outside of on of those swirls.

 

[JerryC]

Baron wrote:

Well that is pretty cool Jerry. I wish I had time or inclination to tie. Truth is that the learning curve alone I allot for an old fart like me. Once Sumer comes and the spawning is over will the Crappie disperse into individuals or will they remain in schools?
How do you protect from pickerel. What type of tippet do you use or am I making too much of this. I usually use a 4x mono or 3x floro.

Posted on: Yesterday 22:30


Crappie are school fish, so if you catch one there should be others in the area.

My guess those swirls you saw were spawning fish. Could be perch, suckers, even minnows. Pickerel tend to spawn earlier in the year. As far as leaders for pike if you look at the second sunfish picture I posted, you can see the leader. My buddies and I like to fish Shohola Lake and it as some big chain pickerel and bass in it. So my leader is 5 or 6 feet of 20# or 25# fluorocarbon. I've never found pan fish, at least with top water, leader shy. Besides you never know what's going to take a 2 inch long fly.

 

[Baron]

Gouldsboro is much like Shahola, depthwisee anyway.

 

[Baron]

Jerry, I had 3' of 10lb mono on last night and they a 25lb. The ten pound lays out flat and nice while the 25 remains messy. Both were tied to a 2x bass leader, originally 9' but trimmed back to 6' .
I guess I'll go with the 10lb and if I'm still loosing allot I'll get look into notable wire leader.

 

[JerryC]

Baron wrote:
Jerry, I had 3' of 10lb mono on last night and they a 25lb. The ten pound lays out flat and nice while the 25 remains messy. Both were tied to a 2x bass leader, originally 9' but trimmed back to 6' .
I guess I'll go with the 10lb and if I'm still loosing allot I'll get look into notable wire leader.

Baron, I use a furled leader that's 5 foot long and then 6 feet of tippet material. The leader will lay out 10 to 25 lb tippet without a problem. It's possible that the point where the 2X bass leader is trimmed back to is less than 25# test which would prevent the heavier tippet from rolling over.

 

[Baron]

Yes after using 10 lb mono for the tippet it lays it out pretty nicely.

 

[Baron]

Do you make your own Furled leaders and do you use a tippet ring?

 

[Baron]

Sal,
Largest that I've caught was on a fly and was only 9" but he was fun to pull in. Since then I've seen people with larger ones and they must be really fun.

 

[Baron]

Ya know, I better say it, I've suffered my whole life from Grass-is-Greener syndrome.
Always fished out-of-state on vacation every couple years. Always wanted to fish out west.
Since I started studying Fly fishing I've learned more about how aquatic nature works and where than I had ever dreamed. And I sell water plants and flowers for a living. I should have known.
I never realized that the state of PA (and to be fair all neighboring states) can provide all the excitement one could ever hope for as far as fishing is concerned. What a list of species to choose from. I have been over-simplifying it for years as Bass vs Trout. But their is so much more and often at the same location.

 

[Dave_W]

Baron wrote:

Since I started studying Fly fishing I've learned more about how aquatic nature works and where than I had ever dreamed. And I sell water plants and flowers for a living. I should have known.
I never realized that the state of PA (and to be fair all neighboring states) can provide all the excitement one could ever hope for as far as fishing is concerned. What a list of species to choose from. I have been over-simplifying it for years as Bass vs Trout. But their is so much more and often at the same location.

Yep - you are definitely are getting it!

I often tell new FFers or try to explain to non-outdoorsmen... that FFing is an intense interaction with nature and people who have a keen sense of observation and love the details of nature often find they love FFing.

While I enjoy my trips out West or to the ocean, I'm really pretty much a homebody and, most years, don't travel much beyond a day's drive to go fishing. Living in PA offers a lot of action for a lot of species.

 

[JerryC]

Baron wrote:



Do you make your own Furled leaders and do you use a tippet ring?

I don't make my own, Baron. Way beyond my mechanical abilities.
Over the years, I've swapped flies and/or materials with folks that made them. They last a long time. All the ones I have were made before tippet rings became popular on furled leaders. I bought nice thread furled leader last year in a fly shop in Waitsfield, Vt. First thing I did when I got back to Philly was clip off the tippet ring. Matter of preference.

 

[Baron]

Bamboozle, 2000 years, really. Ha ha.
Thats when we sold our horses.

I was thinking of using a blood worm fly that I bought on BigY. Spent the last weekend teaching Grandkids to fish and was using spinning gear so haven't had the chance yet.

I'm pretty sure I have 6 of the 10 Grandchildren hooked on fishing.

 

[Baron]

JERRY, I’m thinking to add a 68”/16lb furled leader to my fly line and the 30-40” of 10lb mono to that. Will that be appropriate for shahola type waters. Target is panfish but like you said pickerel and Bass up to several pounds are a common by-catch to this type of fishing. I caught a 13” smallie in Gouldsboro recently and I realiz it could have been twice that size.
Although it is working okay I’m not happy with the coils that I get when I use cut back leaders.

 

[JerryC]

by Baron on 2020/5/18 12:34:52

JERRY, I’m thinking to add a 68”/16lb furled leader to my fly line and the 30-40” of 10lb mono to that. Will that be appropriate for shahola type waters. Target is panfish but like you said pickerel and Bass up to several pounds are a common by-catch to this type of fishing. I caught a 13” smallie in Gouldsboro recently and I realiz it could have been twice that size.
Although it is working okay I’m not happy with the coils that I get when I use cut back leaders.

Not sure what exactly a 16 lb furled leader is. If the leader tapers to a 16 lb test equivalent, it should turn over flies with a 10 lb tippet. You could probably even use 12 to 15 lb tippet and get the flies to turn over. You could use 4 or 5 feet of 10 lb. Save on having to change the tippet so often. Try different lengths and see which works best.