Thread: How big is big enough?...

I won't keep a bluegill less than 7 inches. That seems to me to be the bare minimum to get any kind of worhwhile amount of meat.

In the winter I will keep and filet a bunch of 6 inchers but they need to be bigger in the summer. If the body of water I"m fishing needs to be thinned out I keep them all and put them somewhere else that needs some , like the rivers. A lot of people won't agree but I have been known to plant some in my garden!

Targeted blue gill and perch Sunday morning on a lake that was hosting a Red Cross Fish Tournament (not part of my plan). I dropped anchor in about 8 feet of water and started filling the bucket with gills while boat after boat trolled past tossing their jig-n-pig or what ever.

Seven inch seems to work for me – I think 8 inch was the biggest of the day. Cleaned and fried up 13 of them for dinner but could only put down 8 and the rest in the frig.

I keep every other bluegill I catch in the 7-10 inch range. Any bigger I let them go. I only keep half to try to thin out the pond I fish in to some extent. I leave all the small ones in because the bass gorge on them regularly.

if they are big enough to get a few bites off them I will keep them if IM fishing for supper. I tend to let the bigger ones go (size of my hand and bigger). It is much better for any body of water to thin the larger population of smaller gills than to only take home the big uns.

Originally Posted by bassnbrian

if they are big enough to get a few bites off them I will keep them if IM fishing for supper. I tend to let the bigger ones go (size of my hand and bigger). It is much better for any body of water to thin the larger population of smaller gills than to only take home the big uns.

That's pretty much what I do.

if they are the size of my hand in the bucket they go, "lil" lets me know what 1's we are gonna keep most of the time. as a rule of thumb 7 or bigger is ate in my house, but we got tons of them here and i seem to be the only 1 fishing 4 them

6.5"-8" is my keeping size if it is a trophy gill it gets put back to let the big gill genes continue.