The author, left, with photographer Colby Lysne, on the road to Panfish Nirvana.

But this much I was honest enough to know: After angling for bigger and more glamorous fish, a return to the blissfulness of bream was going to require the big thinking of a bona fide adventure. The result? A Panfish Odyssey. An eight-day road trip through the epicenter of bream biodiversity, down where Georgia butts heads with Florida. Down there with oddball bream such as stumpknockers and warmouths, shellcrackers and swamp fliers. And bluegills that defy description. I hooked up with photographer Colby Lysne, who¿d never even heard the word bream. We met in Jacksonville, Fla. We brought six spinning rods, four fly rods, and a field guide to freshwater fish. If I were going home again, I wanted one heck of a reunion.