Big Bluegills

Fish for big bluegills the same way you fish for bass, only in miniature. Make your presentation resemble the bluegill's natural food as closely as possible. While you can almost wade into the middle of small bluegills and still get them to bite, larger bluegills are more wary, especially when they are in shallow water. When bluegills first move into the shallows to spawn, they are the most skittish. Stay as far away from the spawning beds as you can and still successfully reach them with your casts. If fishing from the bank, walk softly and make as little noise as possible. Keep a low profile to avoid casting your shadow across the beds. Some anglers are known to crawl along the bank to prevent them from being detected. The best possible presentation is using only a hook and small amount of bait (no bobber and no weight), casting at least 15 feet with an ultra-light spinning rig and very light line. Try to cast beyond the nests and retrieve the bait through the colony. Let the bait sink slowly into the nests like natural food. Watch the movement of the line to detect the bite. Since spawning bluegills are sometimes preoccupied or skittish, so your bait may have to sit for a couple of minutes before you get a bite. When the big bluegills have just arrived at the nests, they tend to scatter, then slowly return to the beds when something hits the surface of the water. After they have been on the nests for a few days, they tend to swarm, even attack, when something hits the water. But put the odds in your favor by making casts as quietly as possible. What triggers bluegills to spawn is speculation. Weather is a major factor. After two or three warm, sunny days in early June with high humidity, bluegills will nearly always move to the beds. But just because it's spawning time doesn't mean the bluegills are always willing to bite. Bluegills feed most aggressively in the early-morning and late-evening hours. A thunderstorm will run bluegills off shallow nests. And it may take a couple of days of sunshine and clearing shallow water to put them back into the spawning and feeding mode. Big bluegills will stage in deeper water just beyond the spawning areas. If there are no bluegills visible on the beds, they still may be willing to bite. Try casting to adjacent deeper water, especially around cover such as docks or fallen trees. In most cases, it is desirable for anglers to take some bluegills home for the dinner table. Anglers play an important role in controlling bluegill overpopulation and stunting. However, fisheries biologists now believe that bluegills are not an unlimited resource. It is possible to overharvest bluegills and throw a lake's fish population out of balance, biologists say. So it's important to observe the legal creel limit and to use restraint in the number of bluegills you take. Take enough to feed your family and leave the rest for another day or another angler.