Trying to Find Redears

One word...............Crickets

Used to fish the upper end of Lake George where the lake runs into the river.
around Camp Henry.

Locals told us to take a long pole and poke around the bottom until you found shells. (You could feel the crunch when you pked the pole around)

Then fish over the shells.

Worked for us.

We used La. Pink worms under a slip cork fishing with Zebco 33's.

pegged the cork just so the worm would be a few inches above bottom.

we caught e'm in July and august. never did well the full moon in may which is supposed to be the "Time" for shell crackers down there.

Good times are not forgotten.

Smackover

i fish chinks(aka shell crakers,chinkapin,red ears exc.) most of the year.
The first spawn of the year almost always occurs on the full moon nearest the time the optimum water temperature first occurs. Some bream, particularly bluegills and shellcrackers, spawn around the new moon during the summer, when water temperature are well above the minimum spawning range. But the preponderance of the data shows that the period extending from one week prior to the full moon to one week after the full moon sees the strongest activity. This is definitely when most creel surveys show the highest per-hour catch rates.

Expert bream anglers narrow that time frame down even farther -- to a few days before the full moon to three or four days after the full moon.

Males, which are normally larger than the females, show up first to cruise an area, stake out territory, and begin fanning beds. This usually starts a week before the full moon, and it may take that full week before the females move in to join them. During this "cruising period," the males are often reluctant to bite. Once the females show up, however, the action can get hot.
try this link(http://www.gameandfishmag.com/fishin..._03/index.html)

Sound's to me like you're catching good bluegill and other assorted fish.I think if they're were a good population of redear you would have picked up more than one considering you fish about two day's a week.Remember to keep your bait close or on the bottom and if they're there should at least catch a few.

Thanks for the awesome tips, everyone. I have a good arsenal of tactics I can try now, due to the good response I've had to this post. I've learned a lot in these forums, and hopefully some others are finding it useful as well.

I intend to be hunting for those redears starting in a couple weeks-- I'm having too much fun with the crappie and walleye to stop just yet. The muskie bite is coming on strong, too, but I will juggle in the redears as soon as it warms a little.

We had a major ice storm around here (Southern MO) and it loaded several of our area lakes with laydowns and big limbs; combine that with a full year of high water (with no end in sight), and you have an immense amount of cover where before there was little. It has made for tough fishing for most anglers I talk to locally, but some are adjusting to the new conditions and doing well.

Concerning the elusive (so far for me) redears, late last summer (late Aug- early Sept) I ran into a pack of redears that were hanging out on one partially-flooded buttonwillow bush that was at the end of a long row of the same kind of bushes, plus some downed timber. The water around the bush was about 3-4 feet deep, next to a quick taper to about 8-10 feet. I caught the fish on small (1-1/2 in. orange, yellow, and black twirly-tail grubs with 1/32 and 1/16 jig heads. I tried tipping with worms and it didn't seem to matter. Worms alone under a float produced nada. I had to stay back from the bush 10 feet or more and cast the lure right next to or into the bush. The fish would hit on the fall, sometimes right at the splashdown, sometimes when I would be reeling the lure in at a medium-fast retrieve. One of the biggest redear I caught was when I was drifting the same lure in about 10-12 feet paralleling the shoreline in that same area. I could see on my graph that there were some larger fish hanging out at that depth. I would bet those were the bigger fish of the school, but maybe they were crappie. Crappie were definitely in the vicinity offshore, and bluegills were using the area as well, suspending over deep water hitting near the surface, which was how I stumbled upon the readear. Maybe I'll get an underwater TV thing this year and be able to verify those kind of hunches about blips on the graph. The bite lasted for about a week and that was that. The biggest redear I had measured about 10 inches, and from what I've heard, that is only average for these sunfish.