Fishing The Ol' Car Hole

Anyone that has ever fished with me, no doubt knows that I love to catch fish.  In particular, trout from a small stream and feisty Bluegill from my various local ponds.  Now that I am focusing my fly fishing and efforts to the local ponds and using the blog to cover my adventures, this post will be about my favorite warm water fish, the Bluegill.

 I have been a Bluegill fly fisher for many a season.  I fell in love with it as a young man on a local pond near where I lived at the time, and still after all these years, I have a deep passion for hitting the local ponds and chasing Bluegill.  I like nothing better than to be tossing a Rubber Spider of some sort or another at a school of feeding Bluegill on the surface.  Oh, yes, I will fish with small nymphs or streamer patterns for them too.   Down is where the bigger Bluegill hang out.  They are the "Bulls" as I call them!  Since we are talking about fishing "Down" for bigger Bluegills, reminds me of a time and a story from a past Bluegill adventure.

Now, I am going to ask you to bear with me for a minute while I share a picture that in a way has some relevance to this post.

This picture is a shot of the early 2000's version of Bonnie and Clyde.  Check out the Dame!
That old car had gone as far as it could go.  So what does this picture of Bonnie and Clyde have to do with catching Bluegill?  Well, imagine if you would, that this Ol' Car was submerged not too far off shore in your favorite pond.  For effect, imagine also that the roof still intact in this picture was missing in your submerged Ol' Car in the pond.  Now with that vision in mind, I will return to my Bluegill story.

It was a particular sunny day with no cloud cover.  I was walking the shoreline looking for Bluegill to be bunched up around the weed beds and cattails.  I had picked up a few smaller Bluegill, but to be honest, it was a slow day so far.  Forgot to mention that this pond was a pretty good sized pond and I had never walked the entire shoreline.  As I did on this day, I came too a small bluff that allowed me some height to look down on the water.  There I saw for the first time the Ol' Car submerged in the water.  The other thing that I was shocked to see were some really nice looking bigger Bluegill sitting or swimming I should say, I kid you naught, in the backseat of the Ol' Car.
I fumbled in anxiety the first cast with a floating line and a Rubber Spider.  Darn it, spooked them and they swam back out the door and I thought my fun was over.  However, as I sit down on the ledge and peered down into the Ol' Car, unbelievably in a few minutes, the school of bigger Bluegill came back and in through the open door of the car they came and right back into the back seat area again.  

After observing them for awhile and being very careful not to spook them this time, I decided to switch to a small dark streamer/leech pattern that would sink down into the back seat where the fish were instead of trying to force them to come up to the surface for a Rubber Spider.  Oh, so carefully, I was able to look down and cast a short distance and let the fly sink this time to the fish's level.  Fish on!  I couldn't believe I had actually pulled this off.  I landed a Bluegill that was probably close to a ten incher!  I released the fish to swim another day and sat and ate my favorite fisherman's sandwich. (Make that a Peanut Butter and Jelly).  As I sat and watched the Bluegill slowly hang in the back seat of the Ol' Car.  Occasionally, they would swim out of the area and before too long.  They would be back!  I did manage one other nice one out of the back seat area before the other Bluegill got wise to my game.

The moral to this story is true to this day.  You can catch Bluegill out of the back seat of the Ol' Car too!

Thanks for reading!