Reality presented itself in a flash of round shapes, bright as saucers, darting up to smack a surface fly tossed tight to the bank of a gravel pond somewhere east of Boulder.
But the reminiscence was of fallen trees protruding from dark, distant waters, a small boy with a cane pole, a bobber and a tobacco tin squirming with worms.
Nearly everyone who grew up fishing in places to the east or south has a sunfish memory planted firmly in his mind. For many, these recollections have been supplanted over time by grand images of trout, walleye or even larger creatures that snap their teeth in some distant ocean.
Yet some of us never leave those reveries of bluegill, pumpkinseed or redear. We may recall them with old familiar names such as bream, stumpknockers or shellcrackers, but the fish always are the same. The fond remembrance always transports us to some faraway place where we drift through a soft, sepia world of friends and loved ones, some of them gone.
When daily trials hold sleep at bay, I imagine myself in a rowboat with my father beneath a bower of mossy cypress, the soft sucking sounds of feeding bluegill calling to us. Then I drift with the boat into dreams.
Now, in the stark brightness of Colorado midday, I discovered a second heaven. Crystal water revealed the circular scallops of bluegill beds fanned clean of moss. Small shapes darting back and forth told that the occupants were in.
John Barr, famed for fly-tying invention, aimed a large foam hopper of his creation toward the target and immediately was rewarded with a splashy rise. The bluegill that came to hand touched 8 inches on the gauge of Barr’s kickboat.
“That’s a quality bluegill for Colorado,” said Barr, who employs what some might consider an unusual panfish strategy. His BC Hopper, designed with Arvada fly-shop owner Charlie Craven, is a buoyant and bulky size 8, presumably large for a sunfish mouth.
“Everyone thinks they have small mouths, but they actually can open them pretty wide,” Barr said. “This way, you avoid putting wear and tear on most of the little fish.”
Barr’s sunfish strategy does include one concession to size. To fully enjoy the considerable tug of these broad-beamed scrappers, he chooses the new Sage TXL series of rods for a one-weight line. This balanced outfit delivers a wind-resistant fly a surprising distance while maximizing the fight of smaller fish such as panfish or brookies.
Of course, the true beauty of sunnies is that almost anyone can catch them on a wide variety of gear. Better still, no other group of fish performs as well as a teaching tool for learning anglers.
Give a kid a push-button spinning rod, a red-and-white bobber, a night crawler, a pond full of sunnies and you have a lifelong angler in the making.
Nor is there a better tutorial for the beginning fly-fisher. Sunfish in shallow water rise readily to dry flies and are absolute suckers for almost any nymph, offering the sort of repetition that teaches us how to react to the take of other fish species.
While no one wishes to depreciate such delightful creatures, this must be said: Sunfish are not the brightest fish in the lake. Find a pod of bluegill and you’ll likely get at least one bite from each of them. And we love them for it.
Of the several fish that biologists generally shoehorn into this classification, only one, the green sunfish, is native to Colorado. Others, notably bluegill and pumpkinseed, have been introduced in many locations.
You’ll find these scattered along Colorado’s Front Range and in farm ponds on the eastern plains, as well as various warmwater locations in the far west. While sunfish typically are associated with ponds, they also can be found along the margins of larger lakes and reservoirs.
Timing is important to sunfish success. Delayed by cool temperature, sunfish began building nests about 10 days ago and should remain near shore for another week or so. After bedding, the larger fish retreat to deeper water for the remainder of the season and are difficult to locate except for shallow feeding forays around sunrise or sunset.
The Colorado Division of Wildlife periodically plants bluegill in various public waters along the Front Range, usually in concert with largemouth bass. In proper balance, panfish provide important forage for bass, which in turn keep the sunnies from becoming stunted by overpopulation.
You’ll find central Front Range sunfish locations catalogued in the popular DOW periodical “Fishing Close to Home,” available for $7 at the agency’s offices and most fishing shops. Even with this guide, it’s important to do some personal scouting to discover the spots with the best numbers, size and conditions.
Then you can begin building sunfish memories of your own.
Listen to Charlie Meyers at 9 a.m. each Saturday on “The Fan Outdoors,” KKFN 950 AM. He can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
