If you’ve got a fishing rod and reel gathering dust in the corner of your garage and you’re getting the itch to spend some time in the great outdoors this spring, I hope this story motivates you to get out and go.
I’ll even break the cardinal rule of fishing and tell you exactly where to go and what to use. The only catch is, it might be a species you don’t hold in high regard.
In conversations with many local anglers, I’ve only come across a small fraction who consider this fish a target species — fewer still who are aware of their appeal and versatility as table fare. Those who are fond of targeting these fish are usually transplants from the Midwest or the South.
I’m talking about the regionally maligned bluegill.
They are small in size and have a large forehead (more like a fivehead) and a face only a mother could love. Compared to the chrome-bright beauty and sheer size of a steelhead or Chinook salmon, you can understand why so many local anglers look down on the lowly Bluegill.
Two 5-gallon buckets of bluegills might net you the same poundage as two fillets from a single mature salmonid.
I, too, once viewed this small warm-water fish with disgust and disdain. One afternoon when I was just a lad, I found myself on the banks of Carlisle Lake in Onalaska, frustrated that my bait and hook made their way into the mouth of bluegill after bluegill while I was trying to catch rainbow trout for the supper table, completely unaware that I was tossing back into the depths some truly delicious morsels.
But my journey as a fisherman has evolved through many stages that I now look back on with varying degrees of chagrin. Growing up in Lewis County, I chased stocker rainbows all over hither and yon, from Packwood Lake to Borst Park Pond, and most points in between. I started out with a rudimentary setup: a nightcrawler drowned under a bobber. Eventually, I graduated to spinners and spoons. Then, invites from buddies to cast soft plastics and frogs at bass became my teenage fixation. In college, I morphed into an utterly pretentious fly-fishing purist who almost pursued an existence that would have blended Hemingway and Kerouac with Maclean and McGuane.
During the pandemic, after having watched seemingly everything on Netflix and Hulu, my wife and I stumbled onto a gentleman from the Northwest who made ice fishing videos on YouTube. And with that, our most current angling obsession was born.
Our ice fishing adventures opened our eyes to the world of panfish, which had the unintended consequence of reconnecting me with the very reason I fell in love with fishing in the first place. Through all the stages of my fishing life, I’ve chased one feeling: the feeling of a fish on the other end of my line. Whether it was hauling up an 8-inch perch through the ice or the 20-pound Chinook that took me aerial three times, I can’t get enough of that feeling. They say “the tug is the drug,” and that perfectly sums up why I love fishing. The chemical reaction tied to fighting a fish has me hooked. My apologies for the pun.
So when someone mentioned that Swofford Pond had an abundance of panfish, we made plans to see if we could catch enough for a fish taco or two. We loaded up our fishing vessel — an old Livingston 10-foot, dual-hull bathtub of a boat that fits in the bed of my Ford F-150 — and set a heading for just east of Mossyrock.
Swofford Pond is a 216.5-acre lake near Mossyrock that was originally impounded to create a home for juvenile steelhead. When this proved unfruitful, the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) began managing it for warm-water species. There are naturally reproducing populations of bluegill, crappie, largemouth bass and brown bullheads, according to the WDFW.
We launched our little boat and anchored up in the first cove south of the launch. The water is shallow with a lot of vegetation covering much of the east end of the lake — ideal habitat for panfish. We rigged up our rods with size 10 hooks and a chunk of nightcrawler 2 feet under a bobber, then sent our setups to the edge of the weeds.
It’s at this point in the story that I must confess: I am an inferior angler to my wife, DeeDee. We’ve had innumerable fishing excursions in our nearly eight years of marriage, and I don’t know if there’s ever been a trip where my body count was higher than hers. This trip was more of the same.
Cast after cast, DeeDee’s bobber would plop down and hardly get settled before it would start to dance and dunk. I would cast in the precise spot she had just pulled a nice fish from, only to watch my bobber sit motionless for an eternity. I’d finally get impatient — sure she had fished out that spot — cast to a different one, just to watch her cast to that same spot and immediately hook a fish. It’s a good thing I’m an emotionally intelligent modern man who does not get angered by trivial little issues like being out-fished by a beautiful woman.
After she pulled her eighth chunky bluegill into the boat (compared to just two for me), I made the decision that we should try another spot — perhaps one where the fish would prefer my presentation to hers.
Our electric trolling motor (combustion engines are prohibited here) propelled us along the southern shore from spot to spot. Casts were made, fish were caught — again, mostly by DeeDee. I centered my chi and repeated my mantra: “The bobber goes down, the tacos come up.”
Around 8 p.m., we made the call to head back to the launch. In addition to the continuous fishing action that yielded us 25 healthy bluegill for the fryer, we were treated to a near non-stop aerial display from bald eagles and ospreys, whose fishing prowess surpassed even DeeDee’s.
When the filleting work was complete, the taco-making work had just begun. The fish got a dunk in Cajun fish fry, followed by a quick bath in canola oil until golden brown. Laid on a flour tortilla, adorned with cabbage, red onion, cilantro, cotija cheese and a drizzle of crema, you end up with a fish taco that could make even the most ardent catch-and-release angler rethink their position.
So if you're looking for an excuse to get outside, dust off your gear, and maybe rethink what it means to have a successful day on the water, let me suggest giving the humble bluegill a second look.
They may not win any beauty contests or make the cover of Field & Stream, but they’ll keep your rod bent, fill your frying pan and just might remind you — like they did me — that fishing isn’t always about chasing trophies. Sometimes it’s about chasing that feeling, bite by bite, bobber by bobber. And if you’re lucky, maybe even a taco or two.
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