Bluegills taken on sponge-rubber spiders are great fun to catch.

It always happens sometime near Mother's Day or shortly after. I get this terrible craving to go fly fishing for bedding bluegills.

Once 'gills move up onto their spawning beds, they are about as easy to catch as calling and hunting turkeys is difficult. And frankly, as much as turkey hunting appeals to me, my season of trying to seduce a wary old gobbler ended without firing a shot.

Bluegill fishing is great fun. A person can wade the shoreline slowly, if the bottom is hard, and cast ahead to the saucer-shaped spawning beds. Or, as I prefer, casting to bedding fish from a canoe or small boat is equally pleasant.

A morning or afternoon with bluegills & sunfish amd a fly rod is great fun.

The fly rod, reel and line isn't nearly as important as it is for trout, but a well-balanced outfit works. I favor a No. 5 or 6-weight rod and line combination, and a floating line is perfect. A seven-foot leader tapered down to 5X works great.

Years ago I fished with two flies: a Red Ibis and a No.14 Adams, and often it was possible to catch two 'gills at once. Each would try darting off in different directions, and it was a hoot catching them.

Now, I do things a bit differently. A sponge rubber spider with twitchy little rubber legs works fine, and my favorite colors in order of personal preference are black, yellow or green. They can be found in slowly sinking models and spiders that float on the surface.

I haven't seen any of the sinking models in recent years although I suspect they are still around. The floaters work just dandy when pitched to a whitish dish-shaped spawning bed and allowed to sit idly on the surface over the fish. Male bluegills are very protective of their spawning area, and they arrow up off bottom to suck that spider off the surface.

On occasion, if the 'gills have been fished pretty hard, they may ignore the spider. If you happen on this situation, don't worry about it. Jiggle the fly line a bit by hand, and a bull bluegill will shoot up to smack the moving spider.

Where the sinking rubber spiders (believe I only have one left) work best is for those larger bluegills that spawn in four to eight feet of water. Hold the spider underwater, squeeze it two or three times so it soaks up some water, and cast it over one of the deeper spawning beds.

Give it time to slowly sink, and twitch the spider a bit as it sinks. This makes the little rubber-band legs wiggle. This can be a good way to catch some of the larger bluegills in a lake.

Use polarize sunglasses, find the spawning beds, and cast spiders over it.

Big pug-nosed bluegills are not available in an unlimited supply. Some lakes have nothing but small, stunted fish. A few lakes produce some palm-sized bluegills and sunfish, and such fish are capable of producing a wonderful fight.

Three things endear anglers to bluegills. They are fun to catch, they are great to eat, and for their size, they put up a great fight. A 10-inch 'gill that turns his flat side to the angle of the line is not a fish to be horsed in on a light leader tippet. Do that, and you'll quickly lose it.

An angler should never keep a limit of big bluegills. It takes some time for a 'gill to grow to 10 inches, and these are the spawners. If you want fish, keep one or two nice ones and fill out your limit with five to seven-inch 'gills.

Help an over-populated bluegill lake by keeping of small fish -- not the big ones.

Should you be fishing a lake filled with stunted bluegills, keep a limit of the little guys every time you go fishing. They are not big, and it may take 25 to satisfy a hungry angler, but keep catching and keeping and eating the small ones, and after some time, you'll notice a slow increase in the number of bigger fish.

Pitching flies to bedding bluegills is not the same as pitching a big dry fly to an angler-wary brown trout in heavily fished river. But, bluegills lakes are often closer to home than some of the great trout-producing streams, and catching bluegills is a great way to spend a few hours on the water.

And try this. Take your children fishing. Get them involved in fishing at an early age, and when you are old and gray, perhaps one of them will take you fishing. That's how this mentoring process is supposed to work.