Pan Fish

I think that memories that stick with us all our lives are those experiences we had when we were young that we enjoyed doing the most. Here is another one of those fun times that stuck with me.

Pan Fish

 

On one of our summer vacation trips to Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, when I was about 11 years old, my Granddad Frank had learned from some of his fishing buddies that the large Blue Gill were hitting on fly rod poppers at a small lake just east of Gravette, Arkansas. So, my Dad, Granddad, and I loaded up our fishing gear and headed for the lake. When we got there, the lake was almost round with a diameter of about 1000 yards. There was a lot of moss about two feet under the surface, so the only way the lake could be fished effectively was with top water poppers. Out from the bank about seventy feet, the water Lillie’s and pads started.

 

Some of  the fly rod poppers we used to catch the Blue Gill  in Arkansas

 

We put a small floating popper on with a 6 foot leader and started flipping the poppers with our fly rods as close to the Lilly pads as we could get. On almost every cast, a blue gill the size of a large mans hand would hit the poppers and the fight was on. These very large blue gills put up a huge fight on the light fly rods and we literally had the time of our lives catching them. We must have caught 40 of the large blue gill and I was just worn out.

 

Large Blue Gill caught on a fly rod can be one of best experiences an 11 year old boy can have.

 

 

I was resting and my Dad called me over and said…” Do you see that large bullfrog sitting on the lily pads out there.” I said… “Yes, I see it ” and he said… ” Watch.” He started working his fly line and flipped it out there about a foot from the bullfrog. The bullfrog immediately made a couple of hops and sucked in his popper and the fight was on. It took my Dad about 15 minutes to land the frog. He let him go immediately.

 

A large bullfrog sitting on a lily pad waiting for a bug to come along.

 

It’s harder than you might think to catch a large bullfrog on a fly rod.

 

 

We cleaned the blue gill and put them on ice and headed home. The next day, my Grandmother, Lucy fixed us pan fried blue gill and iron skillet fried potatoes with home made biscuits. Her home cooked meals were some kind of good.

 

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Thanks for reading Pan Fish,

Bill