Fly Fishing Oklahoma Panfish With Hoppers And Poppers

When I was a kid my favorite thing to fish with was poppers.  Poppers of red, poppers of green, poppers of white or chartreuse.  Some poppers had feathers, other had legs and sometimes they had both. 

I spent many a weekend on the Brown family farm and the three stock ponds they had were well used by a couple of wide-eyed kids fascinated with fishing.  Just across the road were several other ponds and the bluegill and goggle-eye sunfish were huge in these hidden waters. 

If I have a favorite series of poppers it would be Accardo.  The Accardo Miss Prissy, Spook, and Bream Killer are among my favorites.  When it comes to hoppers I like Dave's Hopper or anything that looks like a grasshopper pattern.  Foam body hopper patterns work well also and the Chernobyl is hard to beat.

In Oklahoma, much like the rest of the country, panfish, sunfish, perch, bream, or whatever name you have for them can be easily found in the waters.  These feisty fellows frequent streams, creeks, rivers, small ponds and large lakes.  One of the wonderful things about panfish is they're always willing to entertain. 

After work today there was an hour to spare and instead of pursuing conversations with carp, I grabbed the popper and hoppers and headed for the creek to visit the panfish. 

A ritual I own is to always wash my hands in the creek mud.  Here in the local creek we have deposits of Black Sulphur and it's pungent enough to hide any scent of chemicals, tobacco smoke, food, or anything else our hands come in contact with.  Of course washing you hands in mud results in dirty hands, but you are ridding yourself of the scents that can repel some fish.  You can always wash your hands at home later. 

Laying the selection of poppers and hoppers on the grass, I selected patterns one by one and offered them to the panfish.  It didn't seem to matter what I selected, the little ones were voracious today.