Pretty panfish pics

I have a fondness in my heart for panfish, they're why I started fly fishing.

When I was a kid, a family friend had a pond on her property on Lopez that we'd visit every summer. It was loaded with bluegill. We'd fish there and catch a ton of bluegill and have an absolute blast. Using soft jigs and bait and our kickass zebco rod/reel combos. Of course, we'd keep count of how many we caught. On a good day we'd each get 15 - 20. Then one day the lady that owned the place (Helen) mentioned that her boyfriend would fly fish and catch 100's of them - in a day. I was intrigued. Fly fishing? What's that? She showed me his rod and reel that he had stored in the shed by the pond - I was hooked. Saved up my money that summer and by the end of the fall I had myself my own fly rod (cabelas combo of course). The following summer(s) I'd catch bluegill on that pond with humpy's and royal wulffs as I learned the ropes of fly fishing (along with fishing the local creek by my house back on the main land).

They may not be the biggest and baddest fish in the pond, but for my money it's hard to beat a colored up pond bluegill caught on a dry fly on a lazy summer day.

That's how I started fly fishing and I'll always be fond of them for that reason.
 
I grew up in the maryland tidewater on Chesapeake Bay. Our normal fishing was actually kinda cool and unique- we fished for gigantor brackish water pumpkinseeds. Toss a wet fly over their nests, and if something we never figured out was happening, they would hammer it. If whatever it was that we never figured out wasnt happening, they would ignore it. But those fish really helped us kids learn to fly cast.
We also had yellow perch run into the freshwater tribs in the spring. Yellow perch on the swing! Our best IIRC was almost 15 inches but it was on a RatLTrap
 
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