The Beautiful Bluegill

by Joel Vance

It was breathless adventure: the whispered telephone alert, the long trip, then furious action at the end of a throbbing rod, line hissing through the water, aching muscles from battling trophy fish...Zane Grey battling billfish in Tahiti? Lee Wulff battling savage salmon in Labrador?

Naah! The bull bluegills were hitting in northwest Missouri. Bull bluegills are those with shoulders like an NFL middle linebacker (and the same disposition). As far as I am concerned, a day without bluegills is a day without sunshine, never mind that stuff about wine.

Bluegills are the perfect fish. They can be easier to catch than a tree on a backcast or they can be as coy as a stud trout. They are a small boy's delight and a grumpy old codger's consolation (I am the small boy, lodged in the body of the grumpy old codger).

The northwest Missouri pond was unprepossessing, a bare pasture pond with dried cowpies and unidentifiable bits of rusty machinery scattered around it. Duckweed formed a green frame for the dark blue waters. It was mid-May, the time of spawning for bluegills, when they are easiest to catch. I flipped a popping bug into an overhanging tree, just to get my bearings, and after reviewing my thesaurus of foul language, tied on new popper and dropped it at the edge of the duckweed.

A sizable bluegill came completely out of the water to hit it. The fish sounded, bowing the rod, and the 4X leader hissed, just like it does in the trout books. The fish made several typically powerful bluegill circles, a bull looking for a way out of the ring, and finally slid across the surface to my waiting hand (which it filled--a good measure for a good bluegill).

For three hours, I stood in the same spot and caught more than two dozen bluegills, some of which weighed close to a pound. In Missouri, a Master Angler-sized bluegill is either 10 or more inches long or one-plus pounds. I qualified several times as a Master angler that memorable afternoon. You can't count on finding bull bluegills each time out, but you can count on finding bluegills and catching them, 12 months of the year.

Popping Bugs

Bluegill spawn in May in Missouri and are ridiculously easy to catch off spawning beds. You can see the beds along the shore, pale circles of bare bottom. Any lure flipped close to a bed will be attacked. But the ultimate bluegill lure is a popping bug. The smaller the bug the more bluegill sizes it will take, but a big bluegill will attack a bass bug as readily as a small "bluegill" bug. The advantage to a mid-sized popper is that the fish don't take it as deeply and, if you do want to release them, you can.

I like a popper with a body about the size of your third fingernail, a hook of about No. 6 or No. 8. Trimmings like rubber legs and eyes are window dressing. A simple hackle-and-feather dressing is plenty. According to Dr. James Henshall, in his legendary Book of the Black Bass which first was published in 1881, revised in 1904 and again in 1924, he saw the Florida "bob," a bass bug with a buoyant body in 1893.

M.D. Butler, Indianapolis, made them, but they probably were not true poppers. Ernest Peckinpaugh, Chattanooga, Tennessee, had noticed that a surface-fished bucktail would sometimes drive bluegills to frenzy, so he invented a double-hooked, cork-body lure, the progenitor of the popping bug. He said he experimented with a cork-bodied bug around 1906 to catch bluegills at dusk, which still is the best time for poppers in the heat of summer. Peckinpaugh died in 1947. A. J. McClane in The Practical Fly Fisherman, says that Peckinpaugh manufactured the first popper in 1934, but must mean 1914 which is about when Peckinpaugh's Night Bugs first popped up in fishing supplies catalogs.

Outdoor writer Will Dilg publicized the new idea, without giving credit to Peckinpaugh. He had gotten some of Peckinpaugh's bugs through a mutual acquaintance, B.F. Wilder. Dilg promoted poppers as "Mississippi Bass Bugs." Wilder and his son each wrote accounts of their association with poppers that sound as if the bug developed more or less simultaneously above and below the Mason-Dixon Line.

The Wilder-Dilg bug evolved from a feather minnow, according to B.F. Wilder's son. He said his father tied a stonefly bug with a cork body and turkey-wing feathers stuck out at right angles from the side. Wilder apparently solved the problem of the hook turning in the body by getting hooks with a hump-shank, but there are no firm dates on when all this happened, though the first efforts were around 1911.

Wilder himself wrote both Henshall and Field and Stream in 1918 to amplify an article by Dilg. Wilder says in June, 1911, he got a "floater" from Louis Adams of New York City and improved on the body shape and the problem of hook turn. So, according to Wilder, Adams invented the bass bug.

Bug Types

There are two, maybe three, bug types. One is the flat or concave-faced bug which creates the sound that gives the bug its name. The other is bullet-shaped and "slides" through the water, so it's called a slider. Some add a "skipper" as a third body shape. Skippers have head faces that sharply angle back from top to bottom and skitter across the water like a skipping baitfish on a rapid retrieve.

Although you can catch the occasional bluegill on a rapid retrieve, I think a popper should be plopped in a good spot, without action, until the ripples die. Then give it just the tiniest twitch and let it sit again. I've had strikes after a minute or more when I left the bug alone as I positioned my canoe or swatted mosquitoes or untangled line.

There are other excellent bluegill lures. I caught most of the bull bluegills on a tiny pink-headed, white-bodied crappie jig, retrieved slowly hand-over-hand. Wet flies are good and the black gnat is traditional, but I prefer a black-and-yellow striped bee imitation. A woolly worm is excellent, a woolly bugger even better. Obviously a pink-headed crappie jig can be a killer. Small spinners work, too.

Bluegills were made for fly rods, but you can catch them on light spinning tackle, too. The jigs and spinners are more suited for ultralight spin gear than for a fly rod. Or you can bait fish, either with an unweighted, bobberless line or with a tiny split shot and tiny bobber, using a bit of bait on a small hook. The sight of a bobber twitching and then plopping underwater is the most exciting moment in all fishing, equaled only by the sight of a fish chasing a topwater lure, mouth open. The traditional bluegill bait is a piece of worm, but various grubs, including bee grubs, waxworms, and maggots will catch bluegills (ice anglers especially use grubs).

As spring turns to summer, poppers work best early and late in the day. Bluegills work deeper, seeking cooler water, and that's when the earthworm or piece of nightcrawler is best. Dunk it six to eight feet deep, especially around standing dead trees. Ice fishermen use tip-ups or short spinning rods. While a winter-caught bluegill is superb eating, I still opt for fly rod time, that magic season from early spring to early summer.

Cooking Bluegills

Once in hand, you can filet a bluegill or gut, fin, and behead it (leave the tail and dorsal fin on and eat around them). My wife claims whole fish taste better than filets, but filets do away with bone problems. Filets can be with or without skin. If you retain the skin, you must scale the fish before filleting it.

Ted Harmon, my bull bluegill contact, is the best fish cooker I know. He prepares filets this way: mix 75 percent Cooper's Pancake Flour (write Humboldt Flour Mill, Box 547, Humboldt, NE 68376 for an order blank) and 25 percent regular flour. Dry the filets, dip in a thin batter of the flour mix and either flat beer or 7-Up. Deep fat fry, using lard or shortening. Not the best route for a cholesterol-conscious cook, but exceptionally good fish. For fish with the bones left in, dip in Milnot, put in a shaker bag of the flour mix, shake, and let sit for a couple of minutes to let the coating set. Then deep fry as before.

I like various Cajun seasonings in the flour. Experiment to see which you like the best. And we use no-cholesterol oil to pan fry fish or filets. An alternative is to bake filets in a casserole dish. Melt butter/margarine and mix with lemon juice to taste, pour over filets. Dust each filet with Cajun spice. Bake for about 10 minutes or until flesh flakes easily. The best fish-cooking book ever is Cleaning and Cooking Fish by Sylvia Bashline (Hunting and Fishing Library, 5700 Green Circle Drive, Minnetonka, MN 55343; write for current price).

It was a clear and sunny day in northwest Missouri, but if a sudden bolt of lightning had fricasseed me as I stood on the bank of that northwest Missouri pond, a pound bluegill threatening the sanctity of my fly rod, I would have had no regrets. Heaven on earth. Later, a teenager came over to me as I dressed the ham-sized bluegills.

"So, where you from?" he asked. "Jeff City," I replied.

"Jeff City!" he exclaimed, looking at me as if I'd confessed to liking liver.

"You drove all the way up here to fish for 'bluegills'!" He shook his head, baffled. Some people have not received The Word.

Several Killer Bluegill Lures


Copyright (c) 1996 Joel Vance. All rights reserved.

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