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Panfish - Sunfish, Yellow Perch, White Perch, Crappie, Rock Bass

2013 Update - Any time out with your kids on the water is a lot of fun.  If you can give you kid a basic fly rod, even if you don’t fly fish, it will be a lifelong adventure and no better quarry to start off than with panfish using foam Chernobyl ants.   Many parks with small ponds with panfish will allow kids to fish and usually they are perfect to fly cast as there is little in the way of shrubs.  Contact you local parks and recreation department to get more information.  It is a lot of fun seeing your children becoming stewards of the environment.

The Panfish  fishery in New Hampshire is quite strong as it does offer offer critical forage for some of the other predatory species.  Panfish have the reputation of being easy to catch and a nuisance for the experienced fisherman.   For this reason, Panfish is a natural choice for Kid’s fishing.     Most Panfish species will school and stay fairly concentrated.   So this helps keep children busy and fishing. 

The experienced panfish angler look to them as excellent table fare and will exclusively target perch through ice fishing as this is when their flesh is tastiest.    There has been recent spreading of Black Crappie which can provide a very nice fight, especially as their size reach 1 lb.

Fly fishing for white perch as they begin to spawn in the rivers offers a unique experience of wet fly fishing especially once they are longer than 12 inches.  Their fight is similar to a Striped Bass except for the size and initial run.  But with very small tippet, it can be exhilarating.

When you notice that there are no panfish where there should be, look closer, as you might see a large Pickerel or Bass in the area.    Often while catching panfish, you will catch one of these predators, and it might be while you are reeling in a small yellow perch.  We recommend that when you catch a 3-4 inch yellow perch, that you should reel it in very slow.