Brawling Bluegills

I thought about calling this post "Monster Bluegills", but the term monster has become somewhat synonymous with "large", even though monsters come in all different shapes and sizes in real life. But to avoid confusion, I changed it to "Brawling Bluegills", so as not to disappoint my readers once the truth about the aforementioned bluegills' size comes out...

I haven't done a whole lot of fishing yet this year. The closest I have gotten to a trout has been when I drive over a small creek that purportedly has trout in it, on my way to my parents' house twice a week. The fishing I have done has been for panfish, and I have caught approximately 100 bluegills and one crappie. Oh, and a few feisty largemouth bass, as well. Most of these fish have been on the smaller side, but there have been a few bigger ones as well. I have found that, no matter the size, a bluegill fights with more than its fair share of tenacity, so I don't mind what size they are. Plus, I try to even the playing field a little by using light fiberglass fly rods while fishing for them.

A beautiful little 'gill

Which brings me to two of my most recent rod acquisitions. First up is my first Steffen rod. If you haven't heard of Steffen rods, don't feel bad. Mark and Tim Steffen roll their own blanks and build their own rods right here in the good ol' USA. Arizona, to be exact. Steffen rods have a reputation among fiberglass rod aficionados as being some of the nicest casting rods in existence. After a small sample size with my own new rod, I can agree! The rod I acquired is a 7'6" 3-piece 2/3wt rod. Since I don't own a 2wt line, I have only used it with a 3wt, and it is sweet! I was casting fairly large dries without problem, up to 50 feet or so. What a beautiful rod!

Next up was another sweet 3wt, a 7'2" 3-piece rod built by renowned glass rod builder Chris Barclay. Again I was able to cast large dries with ease, but this time I also used a size 10 bead-head wooly bugger, and it handled it effortlessly. Which is good, because that's the fly that was working. I fished for about a half hour, and must have caught 30 fish or more. None of them were huge, but they were all fun on the light glass rod.

My beautiful new Barclay rod.

One of these days, I am going to catch a trout. I don't know when. And I don't know where. But it will happen. Look for the cast-by-cast description of it here!