Panfish: Easy Pickins

When it comes to nonstop fishing fun, look no further than the abundant (and hungry) panfish species thriving in waterways across America.

Do you enjoy nonstop action? You want to make sure you go home with dinner? We have a simple answer to these questions: Fishing for panfish checks all these boxes and then some. There are numerous types of panfish (any species of fish small enough to fit in your frying pan counts) living in waterways across America. They almost always bite, there are usually lots of

them, and when you catch panfish large enough to eat, most are quite tasty. Here are some top panfishing targets in the U.S. of A. and how to catch them – a lot of them.

Person standing on a boat holds a fishing rod and a stringer with two white perch. The catch hangs beside the boat railing on a sunny day, with calm water and a shoreline visible in the background.

This kid’s vote is in: Let’s go panfishing! Photo, Lenny Rudow

Close-up of a sunfish being held above the water near a dock, with a small colorful bobber and hook attached near its mouth. The fish's distinctive dark spot on the gill cover and spiny dorsal fin are clearly visible.

Sunfish can often be caught along shorelines, near docks, and, well, just about anywhere. Photo, Lenny Rudow

Sunfish

Found in ponds, lakes, rivers, and streams from coast to coast, sunfish are without a doubt the most ubiquitous freshwater panfish in the nation and are often found in slightly salty brackish waters as well. There are more than 30 different species native to North America, with the bluegill, redbreasted sunfish, pumpkinseed, and redear sunfish among the most common varieties. Most of the various sunfish species have firm white meat that’s sweeter than the average fish, and when you catch them large enough, they make for a great meal.

  • Look for them in ponds, rivers, and lakes, along the shorelines and near structure. Truth be told, sunfish can show up just about anywhere, although they aren’t often found in open or deep water.
  • Catch them using baits like earthworms, crickets, or grasshoppers. Sunfish can feed quite vigorously, so you can catch them using just about any offering – even morsels like a piece of hot dog, cheese, or a marshmallow. Usually, it works best to suspend the bait a couple of feet under a bobber, but you can also catch sunfish while soaking bait on bottom or casting and retrieving.
  • Catch them using lures that imitate insects or tiny fish. They have small mouths, so use small offerings like micro-jigs, #0 or #1 spinners, or 1- to 2-inch soft plastic lures. Tiny surface poppers that mimic insects can be very effective for sunfish, too.

Spot & Croaker

We’re lumping these two species together because most of the time in most places, you’ll find spot and croaker swimming fin to fin. If you catch one, there’s an excellent chance of catching both. These are saltwater fish that enter brackish estuaries up and down the entire East and Gulf coasts. Spot and croaker are the No. 1 panfish for bay anglers, and they also work well as live baits for catching larger fish.

Two side-by-side photos show anglers on a marina dock holding freshly caught fish. In the left image, an angler holds a croaker near wooden pilings and moored boats. In the right image, another angler displays a northern puffer while standing on the dock, with marina boats and blue sky visible in the background.

The plentiful nature of croaker (left) and spot (right) make these panfish a great target. Photos, Lenny Rudow

  • Look for them on oyster bars and over sandy or muddy bottoms where there are lots of worms and other small invertebrates. Many anglers will drift fish until they get some bites, and once the fish have been located, drop the anchor and bottom fish.
  • Catch them using baits like shrimp, crab bits, or clam – they often won’t be choosy. That said, nothing beats bloodworms (sand worms) cut into inch-long bits and threaded onto the hooks of a top-and-bottom rig with #6 to #4 hooks and enough weight to keep the rig right on bottom. One look at their downturned mouths and you’ll realize that these fish root around on bottom to feed, so you always want to make sure those baits are close to it. And if you’re fishing with kids, croaker are incredibly entertaining as they make burp-like croaks when you reel them in.
  • Catch them using lures if you’re incredibly patient and hate using bait, but it will be a struggle, because there aren’t many lures these species respond well to. Fishbites artificial bloodworms do work well at times, and large croaker will occasionally hit scented soft plastics, but bait works far better.
Celebrating The All-American Panfish

Without the youthful joys of fishing for bluegill, sunfish, warmouth, rock bass, white and black crappie, and yellow perch, this boater fears he might well have sunk into juvenile delinquency — or, worse, golf. Learn more.

Crappie

Scientifically speaking, crappie is a member of the sunfish family, but they’re so different from other sunfish – and so popular among anglers – that they deserve their own category. Two species, white crappie and black crappie, are native to the eastern United States and are stocked nationwide. They grow larger than other sunfish species (the world records for both white and black crappie are well over 5 pounds) and are favored for their mild, white meat.

Person seated in a small fishing boat holds up a freshly caught panfish on a fishing line. The boat is on a calm river bordered by a wooded shoreline, with additional fishing gear visible in the background under an overcast sky.

Crappie often swarm in lakes where you find structure like standing timber. Photo, Lenny Rudow

  • Look for them around structure. These fish are very structure-oriented, and most of the year will be found in schools around standing timber, deadfall, brush piles, docks, and beaver dams. During the colder months of the year in reservoirs, they often suspend next to deepwater structure like bridge pilings. In early spring they can be found close to the shoreline as they build nests for spawning.
  • Catch them using baits like small minnow and crawfish suspended under a bobber or cast and retrieved on small darts or jigs. Minnow are the most popular bait for crappie, but remember that these fish can be finicky and often play with a minnow for a while before eating it. If you see your bobber jiggle, hold still and wait; don’t set the hook until it goes all the way under or begins rapidly moving sideways.
  • Catch them using lures including tube jigs, spinners, and tiny crankbaits. Any minnow-imitating lure is a good bet, but keep your offerings small. Crappie usually hit 2-inch lures best and while a 3-inch lure can be effective at times, it may be too large at others.
Two side-by-side photos of anglers holding perch catches. In the left photo, an angler on a boat displays a white perch toward the camera while other passengers stand nearby on open water. In the right photo, an angler seated in a boat holds a yellow perch with dark vertical stripes, photographed on a calm river with a wooded shoreline in the background.

White perch (left) and yellow perch (right) can be found in a huge range of environments across a wide swath of the country. Photos, Lenny Rudow

Perch

Perch come in two flavors, white and yellow, and both are widely distributed through much of the central, eastern, and northern United States as well as into Canada. Both can be found in a wide range of environments including freshwater lakes or rivers and the brackish tributaries to many coastal bays. They bite year-round including in the chill of winter, so they’re often a top target for ice fishermen. Like sunfish, perch have firm, super-sweet meat, and many anglers consider them to be among the tastiest fish around.

  • Look for them in a huge range of areas depending on the waterway. Perch are so widespread that it’s tough to generalize. They may be found in the open waters of a lake, along shoreline structure in a brackish tributary river, over oyster bar in a brackish bay, and everywhere in between.
  • Catch them using baits of all varieties but, again, it’s hard to generalize because these species live in such varied environments. Minnow are always a good offering, but crayfish, earthworms, bloodworms, and shrimp all belong on the list of potential offerings. The baits used by an angler fishing a lake in Minnesota will be very different from the ones used by a fisherman casting into a Chesapeake Bay tributary, so you’ll need to do your homework locally before filling up the bait bucket.
  • Catch them using lures that are very small, since perch have small mouths, usually 2 to 3 inches long. Again, the range of lures you might use for perch is huge depending on where you live and the type of waters you’re fishing in.
Northern puffer fish inflated into a round shape while resting on a gravel-covered aquarium bottom. The small fish has a mottled yellow and brown pattern, spiny skin, and large eyes, with a blue underwater background visible behind it.

Now living in an aquarium, this puffer was caught in the lower Chesapeake Bay on a tiny bit of soft crab. Photo, Lenny Rudow

Northern Puffer

The northern puffer isn’t a panfish that jumps to mind for most anglers, but these funky fish live along the entire Eastern Seaboard, bite willingly, and are the hands-down most entertaining fish to catch when you have kids aboard. Reel one up and it will auto-inflate faster than your SOSpenders, triggering giggles and laughs galore. The northern puffer is easy to ID with its bright yellow coloration and black mottling and is quite tasty (unlike the much less common but headline-grabbing poisonous puffer fish, which has drab gray or green coloration).

  • Look for them around oyster bars, reefs, wrecks, and patches of live bottom in saltwater bays and sometimes brackish waters with high salinity levels (usually 20 ppt or higher).
  • Catch them using baits of just about any type; these little fish are eating machines and will grab just about anything they think might be edible. The real trick to catching them, however, is to downsize the hooks on your top-and-bottom rigs. They have tiny parrotfish-like mouths, and a #6 hook is about the biggest you’ll want to use. When you’re aiming for other panfish with larger hooks and something is constantly stealing your bait but never getting hooked, there’s a good chance these guys are around.
  • Catch them using lures? Well, nope. While you should never say never in the world of fishing, catching a puffer on a lure is about as unusual as it gets.

With that introduction, are you ready to get out there and target some panfish? Do you have plenty of bait? What kind of bait did you get? Is there ice in the cooler? Is the fuel tank full? Most importantly, are you ready to have nonstop angling action and loads of FUN!? If so, anglers, pursuing a passel of panfish should be a priority.

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Published: August 2026

Author

Lenny Rudow

Contributing Editor, BoatUS Magazine

Our top electronics writer and an accomplished sports fisherman, Lenny has written seven books, won 52 awards from Boating Writers International – many for his first-rate marine electronics articles – and two for excellence from the Outdoor Writers Association of America. Angler in Chief at his own FishTalk publication, this passionate angler brings expertise in fishing trends, small boat handling, and DIY projects. His encouraging style is featured in many of BoatU.S.’s popular how-to videos.