Bump Fishing for Bluegill – A Subsurface Strategy for Stained Water

Article by Ivan Zoot

Spring bluegill have happened earlier this year. Higher than normal levels of rainfall in Northern Illinois have accelerated the rise in water temperatures and brought the bluegill inshore ahead of their typical schedule.

This early bluegill bash has been highlighted with what I have come to call fishing for bumps in the water. The rainfall combined with its associated runoff has the water a bit murkier than is typical. As a result, sight fishing is diminished. Typically, a light-colored fly can be seen several inches or even a foot or more down and watching it disappear as it is drawn into a bluegill’s mouth is your first indication of a take. You lose sight of the fly before you felt the hook-up.

Relying only on feedback from the surface has me fishing for the bumps. These bumps are similar to a dimple rise in trout fishing. The water will rise up in a little domed swell just behind where you would be tracking the fly. This is far more subtle than a surface blow up that will be the norm in just a few months in the heat of summer.

This “fish for the bumps” game has been a lot of fun. Typically, the bump swell is followed by a slight tightening of slack in the line. Once the fish chooses a sideways direction (bluegill usually pull 90 degrees to line pressure) the game is on in a typical fashion. Fishing for bumps is perfect for tenkara as you are able to keep the line off the water and observe the surface in a virtually undisturbed state, that is, until the strike induces the bump.

My “bump fishing” fly of choice this spring has been my own variation on a wooly worm. I have made materials choices to create conflicting characteristics so as to achieve the ideal suspension of this fly in the water just a few inches below the surface. If the fly were to ride higher, instead of a surface bump you would have a topwater blow-up. If it rode just a bit deeper the bump would not materialize above the fish.

I tie this wooly variation on a heavyweight, number 12 dry fly hook. The weight of the hook combined with an initial wrapping of a small amount of copper wire adds just enough weight to cause this fly to want to sink. A body wrapping of fine yarn picks up a bit of moisture, and therefore weight as well, to keep the fly below the surface. These sinking elements are offset with floating influences. Palmered grizzly hackle induces some sink resistance. This hackle wants to keep the fly higher in the water.  I  trim this hackle all the way around to a length equal to the hook gap.

This fly is cast on 36 inches of 4X monofilament tippet. This floating tippet choice helps to suspend the fly just under the surface. Sinking fluorocarbon would “drown” the fly and I my goal has been to keep it up higher in the water, just below the surface so as to incite the bumps.

Inciting the bumps was not the original inspiration for the fly. The fly came first as I was seeking to devise a fly formula that would suspend high as an ideal snack for bluegill. My choice of light blue thread was purely for visual assist in sight fishing. Only once I began to fish it did I observe the bumps. I have heard of sipping rises and dimple rises in trout fishing so I knew what I was seeing as soon as I saw the bumps emerging. Bump fishing turned out to be a happy accident when this early spring’s stained water removed sight fishing as a strategic option.

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Ivan Zoot is a tenkara angler recently relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio. He is learning to fish moving water as he has departed the ponds and lakes of Lake County, Illinois.

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