Caught some gills

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Originally Posted by MonteSS

So I am catching these fun 8-10 inchers. Is there a chance of there being some real nice ones in the same area/schools? Or are the larger ones more loners.

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I have news for you...those are nice Gills...if they are at the 10 inch mark that is a trophy for northern strain Gills....heck 9 inch Gills are good fish. There will always be the loners that are bigger....but those fish are something to be proud of. There are some lakes in the USA....public lakes.....that produce huge Gills but they have very long growing seasons....Lake Perris in California is one of the most noted. Richmond Mills in NC is a private lake that produces huge Gills but the money that is spent to get them that size is astronomical....and one pays a huge fee to fish it also. I would be very happy to be fishing where you are at and what you are catching...big congrats.

Regards

Thamks. Not complaining :). I caught a 12" last year but did not get a pic.

Funny thing is this lake has too many small bass and not enough small gills for bass prey. We just added 7500 6" gills so more breeding goes on. I dont think the shock studies were accurate and there are more adults then thought. Big Shellcracker here too and some pretty Long ear. Many of the new gills added are Coppernose so there may be more giants in the future.

We culled over 1200 bass under 15" this year and hopefully another 1000+ next year. No Sunfish are to be kept for now

Your bluegill size will go down if you manage the lake for big bass. The bluegill are big because of their low numbers, which result from the high numbers of bass. If you reduce the number of small bass, the bluegill will indeed increase in numbers, but their average size will go down significantly because competition for food will go up (less food for each bluegill).

Just happened across this thread. M 2 cents on management of bream and bass. I have started fishing small state managed public lakes in Alabama which are not far across the Alabama-Florida line. You check in and you check out....your catch is weighed and counted. The state know exactly what they stock and then was comes out of a given state lake. The rule is you don't throw anything back, especially bass. They want you to keep all bass no matter the length. Also there is no liimit on numbers except you can keep only one over 16 or 18 inches,....can't remember which. Last time on a lake about 3 weeks ago we caught 14 bass, all less than 12 inches, 2 bream, and one nearly six pound cat on a bream buster. The lake is obviously infested with small bass, but rather than kill them the state wants you to catch and keep them. I found this to be unusual since here in Florida the limitis 5 and no less than 12 inches. However, Florida is about to adopt a similar bass rule with no size of limit except only one over 20 inches. Just thought I would pass this along.

Keeping small bass is geared completely toward increasing the average size of the bass. Public waters often need very different regulations on largemouth than a private water body simply because they receive thousands of times as much fishing pressure. It is true that in some instances the governing agency has gone too far and implemented limits, such as trophy-only where anglers are only allowed to keep one bass over 20", for instance, that sometimes allow largemouth to become overcrowded; but no limit on small bass on a public lake is just begging for trouble.

At a minimum, if there are bluegill and redear of any size in those Alabama lakes where they're now having anglers keep all bass, there won't be for long.

It never ceases to amaze me how thoroughly many DNRs in this region of the country ignore bluegill and redear anglers when making regulations. Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have all enacted new regulations within the past decade to improve bluegill angling in public waters...Meanwhile state biologists here in the South ignore all of the advances in fisheries science knowledge of bluegill from the past fifteen years and proceed on the assumption that bluegill anglers are stupid and will take whatever they give them; either that or they just don't care about bluegill and only manage for bass, as they're currently doing with the Alabama lakes alluded to above.

My lake is a private lake community. We added the 7500 BG and will remove about 1000+ bass under 15" per year over 5 years. We can not fertilize the lake because it is a multi purpose lake and we cant have pea soup water. There fore many auto feeders are being installed to feed the BG. Thousands of artificial structure is being installed under docks.This is a $700k 5 year plan recommended by a professional lake management company. All work is done by volunteers.

mighty fine specimens for sure ....