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Sorry, No Crappie pics... But I also LOVE TO FLYFISH for panfish!
For this trip I returned to my old stomping grounds in southern Illinois where I lived as a young child until the 3rd grade.
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Ron say's they call these red-ear sunfish vs shellcrakers. We compromised on this trip and called them Red-Crackers... :)
Regardless, we caught many of them and they pull like a bull!
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While none of our panfish were what I would consider huge, they were surely big enough to fillet and stink up the grease!
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This lake has a 10 hp motor limit so my boat was propelled all afternoon by my trolling motor..
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The lake is also full of stump fields. Actually, they are treetops as 15 feet from the bank was typically 25' deep and 90' near the dam.
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I re-connected with a friend from many years ago in my old hometown of West Frankfort and he joined me on this trip.
I offered him the use of one of my flyrods but he chose to stick with his ultra-light rig using live waxworms.
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Southern Illinois, in particular, is very hilly and rocky with many lakes having almost clear conditions year-round.
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Fly-fishing in near clear water allows you to see the strike up to almost 4' down with my wet flies...
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On this particular lake, the panfish seemed to prefer the Black Gnat over the Bream Killers.
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After the first two hours I had to switch to using my left arm for casts as my right wrist was simply wore out!
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It's been a long time since I've seen one of these. I believe these are called Punkinseed's or Longear Sunfish.
They are simply gorgeous with the orange and turquois. We released all of these.
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Devil's Kitchen Lake has a limit of 25 panfish per person per day.
We reached out 50 fish limit in two hours and continued to catch and then release at least another 50...
Many thanks to Mr. Ron Lam for joining me on this adventure.
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