Along came a spider | Kayak Fly Fishing

submitted by Nick Brummett

Fly fishing isn’t some form of superior fishing method, at least not the way I do it.

Growing up in southern Indiana I knew my flyfishing options probably wasn’t going to include trout any time soon, but that sure wasn’t going to stop me. I feverishly consumed as much info on fly fishing that I could get my hands on. My dad’s numerous outdoors magazines helped to feed the fire, but as we have all come to learn as adults, some things can’t be learned from a magazine.

Our local library had a few fishing videos and of them a couple even covered fly fishing. I remember trying to mimic the motions as instructed, and with some practice the rhythm was achieved, and I began to get a real feel for how this whole craziness works. See with most fishing you cast the weight of the lure, and the line follows. But fly fishing is the opposite, the line is weighted, and the lure is for the most part weightless. So, you send the weighted line forward and the weightless offering follows behind, rolls out in front of the line at the end of your cast. So after practicing awhile in my parents yard I was ready to take it to the next level, the farm ponds!

We had several ponds on our farm that had good populations of bass, some catfish and tons of bluegill. After reading about fishing tiny poppers for panfish I asked my dad to buy me an assortment pack of poppers, even had this odd-looking chunk of foam made to look like a spider. Being ever diligent to further my obsession of the outdoors he obliged, and then took me to our favorite pond. Shortly after our arrival I had lost most of the poppers to the cattails and trees around the pond. I was left with the dorky foam spider, so I tied it on, and they couldn’t resist its appeal! Id plop it down by the various structures the pond had to offer, and the bluegill would devour it with angry vigor. I was hooked! I went out and bought a fly vise and started tying my own flies. I churned out those dorky spiders just slightly faster than I lost them and still to this day prefer to use those foam spiders over anything eles that I’ve made for topwater panfish.

Years later I got my first kayak and things went into overdrive. No longer was I constrained by trees, bushes, and what ever obstructions the bank had waiting to steal my fly during my back cast. The local state park lake gave up so many bluegill, and red ear that year it was astonishing, and almost all of them destroyed those foam spiders. Still to this day if I’m going out for panfish on the surface ill always have a ample supply of hand tied foam spiders along.