First outing at the "Land of the Nuclear Sunfish"

Every year I look forward to my first day on a local farm pond my brother calls "The land of the Nuclear Sunfish".  That's because the sunfish are very large here, especially for New England.

On this first outing of the year I caught more small ones than usual, but nevertheless most measured an honest 8.5" to 9.5" in length.  The largemouth bass here are big too, and I do catch a fair bunch of smaller ones (under 14"); but mostly the big ones are there for the baitcasters who can stand in their boats and yank them out of the weeds.  We're all helped by the fact that this is a catch-and-release fishery.

This is a float tube pond.  Wetlands surround the pond and the lily pads around the circumference is dense.  Fortunately there's a dock that I can use to get myself in and out of the water.  From here I usually take about 3 hours to circle the pond once, in counterclockwise fashion, then I go home.

The yellow gurgle-pop popper has always been my favorite for surface play.  These sunfish like big flies, so I tie my foam poppers on a size 6 barbless (Cabela's) dry fly hook.  The size of the hook may be one reason I catch the bigger sunfish (and why I catch generally the smaller bass). I often fish an entire outing with nothing but this size 6 yellow foam popper.

But this day I had a new experience.  Half way through my morning I lost the third and last guggle-pop in my box, when a very large (I presume) bass broke me off around lily pads. 

Searching my box for anything foam, I spied in the corner two samples of a foam hopper pattern I had first tied when "razor foam" was a new product. I hadn't fished this pattern for a while.  And, when I last used it, it was probably on a smallmouth river.

Long story short, the fished loved this fly.  It's thinner than my poppers and due to the bullet head it will not "pop".  Maybe this, or the black body, are the features the fish were attracted to!  The sad news is that I lost both of these foam hoppers before I finished fishing; but the good news is that the second one was lost just minutes before reaching the dock to go home!

It's been a while since I have tied flies, but now I will have to: Gurgle-pops and foam hoppers!

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Additional Image

Not caught with a foam popper or hopper, I did catch a few on a streamer early in the day when the water was coolest.  This bluegill is nearly 10" long.  It was the catch of the day.

First visit this year to the Land of the Nuclear Sunfish

When water levels are high (as they are in New England right now) I turn from river trout fishing to bass and panfish in local ponds. My favorite was named by my brother as the "Land of the Nuclear Sunfish". For the life of me I can't figure out where the smaller sunfish are. Really, truly, 90% of the sunfish I catch are between 8.5" and 9.5". Granted I use fairly large flies. And maybe the rules of the pond are the big 'uns get first crack at any food source. Well, whatever.

I had a great first day and took a few pictures (link below), including a photo of the fly I caught all the fish with. The top one in the photo is a virgin fly to show you how it looks after tying. The conehead gets it deep, and the fly is tied with only one material: rabbit fur from a pelt or from a zonker strip.

The instructions are simple: (1) a patch of fur tied in as a tail, about the length of the shank, (2) dubbed body using a dubbing loop and fur cut short (or just use pre-made rabbit dubbing) and (3) a collar of fur applied using a dubbing loop. I get a big kick out of fishing real simple flies! (I plan to take some step by step photos one of these days, but it is a pretty straight-forward pattern.)

The bluegill pictured below was one of 3 that measured (plus or minus) 10". Total take on the one conehead fly this day was about 60 sunfish with a few perch mixed in.


You can see more (7) and bigger images here:

http://www.peterfraileygalleries/nuclearsunfish