Panfish expert Jim Gronaw with a bragging-size bluegill.

Natural signs alert us to spring’s arrival. Dogwoods in bloom along wooded hillsides. The yellow flowers of forsythia bushes brightening up the dullness of the past winter. Emerging submergent vegetation in lakes and ponds. All which that mean one thing to the pan-fisherman: The fish should be moving shallow and be on the feed.

Expert pan-fisherman Jim Gronaw of Maryland looks forward to such signs, but they hardly spur his initial angling efforts for the year. No, Gronaw fishes for panfish such as bluegills and red ear sunfish (aka shellcracker) 12 months of the year.

“I caught my first bluegill when I was five years old, and haven’t been the same since,” joked Gronaw, describing an event that took place over 60 years ago. His personal best bluegill is 12.5 inches and two pounds, four ounces. Currently, his best red ear stands at 12 inches. Last season marked his best for bluegills over 10 inches. He landed over 400 of them.

Gronaw identifies several distinct phases of fish movement and activity during the spring, ones driven by warming water, the effects of cold snaps, and the fish’s need to feed and reproduce.

In general, the warming water of spring moves panfish from the deeper haunts where they spent the winter, up into the shallows to feed. Naturally, the severity of winter in your region will influence this, but in areas where water temperatures dip below 50 during the cold months, Gronaw looks for the first wave of extended warm weather to heat things up and bring some fish shallow.

“A series of warm, sunny days coupled with southernly winds will create a ‘thermal bank’ where the water temperature is three to six degrees warmer than the rest of the lake,” Gronaw explained. “Bluegills and red ears that have not eaten much will storm the windward shallows, feeding on larva and wind-blown insects.”

Gronaw, who keeps detailed logs of his many forays, has found that by the time water temperatures reach and stay above 50 degrees, bluegills will be in shallows on a more consistent basis. Shellcrackers, he’s noticed, prefer water temperatures in 60s before he can bank on them being in thin water. Keep in mind that shallow is a relative term. It could be two to three feet deep on smaller lakes and ponds. In larger reservoirs, particularly if the water is clear, doubling those depths might be more appropriate.

For working these shallow areas — and he does most of his fishing from shore or by wading — Gronaw has refined a system that’s a take off a classic method used to dupe reservoir-dwelling bass when the water is cold.

“About seventy-five percent of my methodology, for both of these species, is with a ‘float-and-fly setup,’ a small bobber coupled with a small jig of some sort,” Gronaw explained. “Typically, the jig is tipped with a form of livebait, or a piece of livebait.”

Gronaw prefers using a fixed bobber (as opposed to a slip bobber), oval ones ¾ inch in diameter. The stability of this fixed system — where the bobber is securely attached to his line — serves well the way he likes to make his presentation.

“Many times, I’ll actually be dragging the baited jig across the bottom, with wind blowing the bobber, and with the jig just ticking bottom,” Gronaw said. “Shellcrackers in particular are bottom-oriented.”

Whereas many folks feel three feet is about the limit (distance from bobber-to-jig) for using a fixed bobber, Gronaw often employs ‘droppers’ as long as five feet. He does this by using long, soft action spinning rods. A favorite is Shimano’s 9-foot Convergence spinning rod, one marketed toward the steelhead angler.

“With it I can use a seven or eight-foot dropper with that setup, but normally I’m using four to five feet,” Gronaw noted. “It also enables longer casts, which as a shore fisherman is important.”

Typically, Gronaw uses four-pound-test Gamma clear Polyflex. If conditions are tough, as during the backside of a severe cold front, he’ll drop down to two-pound-test Trout Magnet SOS in green.

As far as jigs go, Gronaw likes to keep things light, using ball head-style in the 1/80th to 1/64th ounce range most of the time. In general, he feels livebait will outperform artificial duplicates, especially during the spring of the year, though he uses both options. Regarding colors, he likes orange, pink and black.

“Black teams well with a small piece of earthworm,” he noted. “Orange and pink couple up well with a piece of mealworm.”

While initial springtime movements of bluegills and shellcrackers are driven by the need to feed, as spring progresses activities will switch to spawning. Gronaw expects to see this change in priorities once the water temperature gets into the 70s. It can be a give-and-take scenario if the weather includes a rash of cold fronts that retard nest-building operations.

“At this time, I tend to fish the outskirts of bedding areas, “Gronaw noted. “Early on, when the temperatures are first hitting that 68-70-degree mark, there is going to be fish moving in and out, more than are actually locked-down on nesting colonies. That doesn’t happen until the temperature gets into the 70s and stays there.”

Gronaw reported that he has had some fabulous days during this transitional period, targeting areas 10 to 15 yards away from the season’s first visible nests, working out toward deeper water. He’s also noted over the years that the bigger bluegills tend to spawn a bit deeper. As such, targeting these “outskirt areas,” as he calls them, ups the odds of contacting the biggest ‘gils in the system.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle