Spring is a wonderful time to fish for sunfish because these aggressive little suckers get even more so when males are guarding nests. Pound for pound, a bluegill or red ear sunfish fights harder than anything in fresh water. When they're surface feeding or on beds, it's no trick to catch 20 an hour, and there's no a better way to teach children how to catch fish on a fly rod.

A good starter rod is an 8-foot, 6-weight. Lighter rods are harder to cast, and we want this to be fun. And sunfish normally aren't leader-shy, so a 7-foot leader with a 6-pound fluorocarbon tippet is easy to cast, will increase the number of strikes and teach kids to play fish carefully.

My standard fly for sunfish is a No. 14 black rubber spider (which looks more like an ant) with white or black legs. Good traditional dry flies for sunfish are No. 10-4 stimulator and stonefly patterns, No. 12 brown drakes and No. 12-16 elk hair caddis.

When the water is warm enough, it's fun to wade the shallows and cast to rising fish, especially in late afternoon. You don't need waders for this, but make sure the kids wear shoes because many lakes and stream beds have lots of pop tops, rusty cans and broken glass tossed in by slobs.

Teach kids that often the best thing to do with a fly is nothing. Cast it and let it sit still until the ripples disappear, usually about 30 seconds. If they don't get a strike, give the fly a little twitch and let it sit. If that doesn't work, twitch it slowly along the surface. By doing that, children will learn that one presentation doesn't always catch fish and to experiment until they figure out what works.