The Bar Nun Popper Wins Again

Today I got to try out my newly purchased Bar Nun poppers I purchased from BreamBugs last week. What precipitated the purchase of the poppers was my fishing trip last Tuesday when I found out that color really does matter when fishing for bluegills. 

The bluegill on Smith Lake doesn’t spawn your traditional style, meaning the water clarity can afford them the luxury of spawning in depths of 10 to 12 feet.  In most other waters bluegill spawns in depths 6 feet or less. Once a popper is thrown their way in deeper water it may take a few seconds before there is a hit. In other words one has to have a little patience to get their attention, using the light scale chartreuse popper.

I had my 3 and 4 weight 8 ½ ft. Redington rods rigged today with a Muddler Minnow and of course my new Bar Nun popper. The objective for the two rigs was to see if color and pattern still really mattered to the bluegill after a week. Long story short it did, no hits on the Muddler at all and killer hits on the Bar Nun popper. In fact I would place the Muddler right in the same place I cast the popper and the bluegill would come up and nail the popper and totally ignore the Muddler. I ordered 6 poppers last week and now I am down to 4 as a result of losing one in a tree and one in a break off with a nice gill taking it with him in a brush pile.  

This bluegill along with numerous small bass and other bluegills continued to nail the popper until the sun over took the banks. Sun is not a friend of the fly fisherman especially on Smith Lake. I want bore you with images of more bluegills, but this one and two others were worthy of the quest. I am now 31 away from my goal.

I manage to land this nice spot using the size 6 yellow Boogle Bug right at daylight. This was my only bass of the morning. This fish took the Boggle while it was sitting still. I had to change my retrieve action to get this fish to hit the bug. The jerk and stop motion didn’t work for this bass this morning. A very slow motion and letting it sit still got the hit. The retrieve could be different on my next outing. That's what makes fishing so exciting for me, one never knows how the fish will react from day to day.