Just in time for summer vacation fishing, sunfish are spawning in North Texas lakes and ponds. The most common sunfish species are bluegills, redear sunfish, redbreast sunfish and green sunfish. Some species are capable of crossbreeding, however, and you sometimes wind up with a variety of hybrid sunfish.

All sunfish are excellent game fish for children because the fish are plentiful and relatively easy to catch with minimal tackle expense. All you really need is a cane pole, a length of line, a bobber, a small hook and a split shot weight.

You can also catch sunfish on inexpensive spincast or spinning tackle-rod and reel rigs that cost as little as $20.

Sunfish are easy to catch during the spawn because they make spawning beds in shallow water, near the bank. The beds and the fish are often visible, particularly to an angler wearing polarized glasses.

Bedding sunfish will bite small lures. Small in-line spinners, jigs and even miniature crankbaits designed for sunfish will tempt these aggressive little panfish. The cinch method of catching them, however, is with natural baits like earthworms, crickets or grasshoppers.

Even the scented soft-plastic lures popularized by Berkley will draw bites from sunfish. Berkley's Gulp! is available in small diameter plastic worms. Cut them into even smaller sizes that appeal to sunfish. Present the artificial lures on ultralight tackle.

Spawning sunfish are perfect targets for fly-fishing fans. Fly fishing is the best way of presenting small offerings to shallow-water fish. Sunfish will readily take a variety of flies, including small poppers and rubber spiders that sink slowly with undulating leg action.

Savvy anglers steal a page from the trout fisherman's playbook by rigging a popper and dropper rig. Attach a six or eight-inch drop leader off the hook of a bluegill-sized popper and tie a nymph or similar wet fly to the drop leader.

The popper acts as an attractant and aggressive fish will often bite the surface lure. More often, however, they swim up to look at the popper and wind up taking the small wet fly trailing along behind the popper. The popping bug in this situation serves as a strike indicator.

As with other game fish, if you catch what you think is a big sunfish, you're better off estimating the weight because the fish probably won't weigh as much as you think. All sunfish weights are relative, anyhow. Even the big ones aren't very big, except in comparison with others of their species.

The biggest sunfish documented from public waters in Texas is the state record redear, which weighed 2.99 pounds. Sunfish in private lakes, where most lake managers fatten the fish with commercial fish pellets, grow much larger. Private waters Texas records for both bluegill and redear weighed 3.25 pounds.

Generally speaking, however, a half-pound sunfish is a good one and a true pounder is a monster. Few public lakes have a one-pound sunfish record. Because a sunfish is very deep through the body compared to most game fish, their weight-to-length ratio varies somewhat. In most cases, a healthy eight-to-nine inch fish should weigh about half a pound. A one-pound sunfish that's not eating commercial feed should measure 10 inches or longer.