There is something special about warm evenings on the local pond. Even the most aggressive saltwater anglers and devoted trout tacticians appreciate the experience of walking the bank with a pocket of bugs, picking off hungry panfish.

But which bugs?

Admittedly, my warmwater boxes are stuffed to the point of testing their magnetic closures. But I keep coming back to the same three fly styles over and over again. They consistently produce the most and the biggest pumpkinseeds, bluegill, and sunfish.

Here are the top 3 flies I’ve come to rely on for panfish:

Panfish Popper

The quintessential fly for chasing panfish with a long rod, the popper deserves every bit of the prominence it holds in anglers’ boxes and hearts. Nothing matches the experience of the tap tap splash of a big bluegill inspecting and then inhaling a feathered popper.

I’m not against sliders, gurglers, or other topwater patterns. The cup-faced popper can’t be beat for how it floats and how it disturbs the surface. Plus, if retrieved and twitched properly,  a small popper can call up larger fish while still being sized such that little mouths can inhale the hook.

I carry poppers in sizes 6-10. Particular colors don’t concern me very much. I do like to have  some flies with trailing feathers that are dark (black, red) and others that are lighter (white, chartreuse). Head material is actually a high priority. Inexpensive, foam heads sink after the epoxy/paint cracks… but they’re cheap. Closed-cell foam, cork, and rubber heads cost more but are durable.

Jig Bugger

If you want to catch the biggest sunfish in the hole, a small streamer is most likely the ticket. A pattern with a lot of passive action from materials like marabou and spindly hackle, like a woolly bugger, presents opportunities for numerous imitations. It can be a crawfish, a baitfish, a large nymph, a leach,  or whatever else makes the broad-chested ‘gills angry.

Utilizing a jig hook allows you to pull the fly over weeds a little easier. More importantly, it is the perfect orientation for dancing across rocky surfaces. Dancing a jig bugger over an exposed patch on a pond edge is one of my favorite methods for enticing big panfish.

Sizes 6-12 cover the bases. Every color of the rainbow will work, but brown and black produce most consistently.  But don’t overlook neon or sparkle materials either.

Rubber-Leg Nymph

Even though they have a well-deserved reputation for being eager to take anything thrown at them, panfish can be spooky.  On pressured waters or during certain seasons, sunnies can be downright skeptical of your flies. I’ve hat to snip off poppers and streamers, replacing them with a small nymph in order to catch fish.

But that doesn’t mean I use an  understated pattern like a hare’s ear or pheasant tail. Those will work. But jazzing a fly up with some rubber legs is usually a good compromise between subtle and enticing.

I’ll fish these buggy nymphs in sizes 8-12. As with the streamers, I carry a mix of natural and wild colors. I’ll also throw one of these behind my poppers as a dropper. Big or wary fish will nip at the nymph before they attack the surface. Also, the popper serves as a good bobber if you’re fishing far out into a pond.

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You can’t go wrong with most flies for panfish. I carry dozens of patterns, but I come back to these three more often than not. Like the look of the flies above? You can find these exact patterns over at Orvis.