Revenge of the Bluegill

“If that son of a gun had a bigger mouth he’d take my finger off,” said the man pointing to a fish in a galvanized tank.

        The man was Leo Pachner and the fish was a half-pound bluegill.

       Leo’s admiration for the scrappy little sunfish was legendary—not only was it a game fighter when caught, he said, but when filleted it made a tasty shore lunch. Leo had been feeding bluegill food pellets in this tank for a year or more. As editor and publisher of Farm Pond Harvest magazine he had invested time and money in experimental aquaculture projects that he featured in his magazine.

     Leo was born in Chicago’s back-of-the-yards district in 1908, and introduced to life in the great outdoors at nine years old, when his family became sugar beet sharecroppers near Unionville, Michigan. After harvest season the family stayed in Michigan, and took up hunting and fishing to survive until the next summer's crop.

    Often Leo’s opinions on fish nurturing rankled professional aquaculturists. But Leo’s advice was widely accepted by those pond owners and fishermen to whom he preached the necessity of conservation, fish feeding, and pond management.

     He is a member of the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, helped found the Sport Fishing Institute, an expert fly fisherman, once a partner in an artificial bait company (P&K Bait), and inventor of the automatic retrieving fly reel. Nothing gave Leo greater pleasure then taking some youngster aside handing him or her a fly rod and teaching the rudiments of fly fishing, particularly if bluegill were to be had. To Leo, fly fishing was an everyman’s sport, and not to be enjoyed only by the wealthy or the privileged.

     Leo is no longer with us. If he were, the flap over bluegill invading Japanese waters and preying on native species, would bring him a feeling of, well, sweet revenge. (Japanese Emperor Akihito introduced bluegill to a Fisheries Agency research institute in 1960.) It’s ironic that the bluegill Leo so admired, and encouraged its acceptance as Illinois’ state fish would overrun Japanese rivers and vex Japanese authorities.

    Because after World War II Leo’s P&K Bait Company eventually went out of business. It could not compete, Leo told me, with the cheap fishing tackle flooding the sporting goods stores from Japan.