A fat spring bluegill taken at sunrise on a popper and 4-weight outfit.

If there is one must-have ingredient in a Florida bream fly it is rubber legs. Rubber legs seem to be the clincher here. Let me simplify it for you. For an entire year I tried every popular fly pattern to see which was the deadliest on bluegills. And it came down to one—the good old green sponge spider with white rubber legs, tied on a No. 10 hook. In its normal state it is a dry fly, buoyant enough to float and crawl over the surface. Hold it under water and squeeze out the air to let it absorb water, and it becomes a wet fly. It will sink slowly to bluegills that are shy to rise to the top. If you carry this fly only, you will catch plenty of bream.

Now, the fundamentals. First, the dry spider. Cast it near shoreline covers like lily pads, weeds, cane, overhanging limbs, debris, rushes, fallen brush, cattails, hyacinths or riprap. All are places inhabited by the tiny critters bluegills eat. Let the floating spider lie for at least a slow count of 20. Normally, the biggest of bluegills do not go for over-active flies, for reasons known only by them, and they aren’t talking. And when you move the spider, do it one time, with the slightest twitch of the rodtip, or a tiny tick of your line hand. Then let it lie still again for 20 seconds or so, before moving it again. This is the very best method when the water surface is calm. If you’re in clear water, and the sun is high enough, you will see larger bluegills ease up to the spider and eyeball it. Then it’s a matter of who blinks first. If the ’gill holds tight, twitch the spider and watch the fish for a reaction. Sometimes when all else fails, making the bug flutter and pulsate continuously will garner a strike from an otherwise indifferent fish. More often than not, the surface bites come best at first light or at dusk.

With the sinking spider, you’ll have to eyeball the tip of your floating line to detect a take. Usually a strike will be solid enough to make the line jerk forward, or downward abruptly. Set the hook with a quick hand-strip and lift of the rod. There will be times when action is nil and bluegills seem to be in Nowheresville. Try this old-timer’s trick: Add extra enticement—a maggot, or a tiny piece of pork rind, or bacon to the hook. The scent can turn on bluegills that already have a belly full of food.

Bluegills can be skittish at times, so the least commotion you make in the boat, or while walking along the shore, the better. And when you make a cast, try not to splat the line onto the water. Cast at eye level, and then the line and fly will softly fall onto the surface. Of course, casting a 3-weight rather than a 5-weight or heavier line makes this much easier to accomplish. Also, in picking up the line for a back cast, drag it slowly to get it moving, then ease it off the surface with a slow lift.

The best time for lunker bluegills is in the spring during spawning time when they gather along shallow shorelines in large numbers. At times the surface feeding activity is visible from a distance, with swirls and “rise rings” all over the surface. And there are times when the fish seem so absorbed with the spawning instinct they totally ignore flies of all kinds.

When summer temps heat shallow waters into the high 80s, bluegills tend to migrate into deeper, cooler waters during the middle of the day. At such times, fishing the sinking spider, or one of many sinking nymph patterns, or the venerable Woolly Worm or Bugger, will be the ticket. However, this practice seems to thin out the flyfishing ranks considerably. Most of us tend to turn to something else, and just return to surface fishing when the time is right.

If you are on the lake once the sun climbs high in the sky, don your polarizing glasses and scope out the locations of beds, those scoured-out light-colored saucers made by both bluegills and shellcrackers. They are commonly made in deeper water than bass beds are. Return to these locations in late afternoon and you stand a chance of bagging the biggest bluegills of all. And more times than not, a cork or balsa-body popper with rubber legs will have more appeal than the sponge spider. Plus, a few bass will climb aboard, too.

FS