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I quietly paddled the old canoe along the shoreline, the fine tip of my nine-foot fly rod lazily bouncing with each paddle stroke as it rested atop the boat's gunnels. Augie, my son and four-year-old fishing partner last Saturday, was sitting up front anxiously gripping his trusty Batman spinning combo and surveying the shallows for signs of fish.

We saw them 50 or so feet ahead of the canoe. It was a large group - a roving pack, if you will - of what appeared to be shiny hubcaps with fins rushing the shallows in an attempt to raid the egg-laden gravel nests of largemouth bass. This pillaging gang of ruffians was bluegill sunfish you occasionally read about but perhaps never catch in a lifetime of fishing. I mean these bluegills were big. It looked like a war was ensuing under the water's calm surface; the over-sized bluegills would rush into the shallows in high numbers from the deeper water where they were met by a well rehearsed and well-organized counter-assault waged by the protective bass.

Upon witnessing this spectacle, Augie immediately had his small jig and twister tail unhooked from his rod and casting. The jig plunked the surface and quickly sank into the deeper water. It took only a few squeaky cranks of the plastic reel handle before the whippy, dime store rod doubled up under the strain of a huge 'gill. The fish bolted against the unseen force, causing Batman to howl and scream in protest. Evidently, Augie had been fiddling with the Caped Crusader's drag setting while I was paddling. I yelled, "Tighten the drag! Tighten the drag!" Augie, desperately clutching the severely bent rod with its handle jammed under his left armpit, replied, "Huh? What drag?" He finally spun the drag wheel with his thumb to a firmer setting and winched in the tired brute.

Instead of remaining out in the lake and risking scaring off these sunfish, I steered the canoe to shore where we kicked off our shoes and began wading the shallows. Augie kept himself busy catching bass closer to shore while I began to stretch out long casts with the fly rod into the deep water. It seemed that any cast that fell short of about forty feet would result in a bass, while casts to fifty feet and beyond would yield a big-shouldered bull bluegill. My father-in-law, Ron, and eight-year-old son, Anders, joined Augie and me shortly thereafter, and we all began to catch numbers of fish. Ron and I caught twenty-something bluegills that gave our 4- and 5-weight rods - not to mention our wrists, arms and shoulders - quite a workout.

My family and I have been fooling these big bluegills with fly rods and weighted nymphs for a number of years now, so it was a surprise to recently view a 3M Scientific Angler DVD touting the use of nymphs as somewhat cutting-edge and revolutionary. I've known all along that a fur and feather hare's ear nymph in the face of a sunfish is akin to ringing the dinner bell. These fly patterns are a convincing facsimile of the tiny invertebrates that sunfish eat every single day. In other words, these fish are simply hard-wired to suck them into their mouths, particularly when it is slowly "chugged" through the water using short, one-inch strips of the fly line. Using a strike indicator (a floating three-eighths-inch polystyrene ball that's pegged to the leader and detects underwater strikes) allows us to set the hook the split-second the flies are inhaled.

I look forward to each May and June when I'm lucky enough to chase these huge bluegills with a fly rod in my hand. It takes catching and holding a few of them every spring to acclimate my eyes and mind to their sheer size. These fish force you to sort of redefine and re-think your notion of what is truly a large sunfish. In a few short weeks we'll look through the lake's clear water and see countless bluegill spawn beds that will pockmark the shorelines like a moonscape.I can hardly wait.

Dan Brown's weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankie's Bait and Marine, in Chisago City, and St. Croix Outdoors, in St. Croix Falls, Wis.

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