Quote Originally Posted by WRHaynes
Seems any bream will bite a nice fat mealworm etc, but the larger, nicer sized bream will hit the aritificial bait most often. deathbydisco do you agree?
The size of most artificials screens out a lot of the little guys. Plus, I think bigger gills tend to eat a lot of small minnows and fish fry. Artificial baits like marabou jigs and beetle spins do a good job of imitating them. So yeah, I do agree that artificials will generally produce bigger fish on average. That being said, my biggest bluegill (11") and my biggest shellcracker (12") were both taken on live bait.

On the other hand, if you catch a lot of fish, the law of averages says you will catch some bigger ones, too if that body of water supports a good population of big fish. That's been my general philosophy on panfishing: catch a lot of fish, and the big ones will come.

Being a bluegill fanatic, I have collected several "big bluegill" articles over the years. (My oldest is from a 1975 edition of Fishing Facts.) The only artificial baits I can remember being mentioned are: beetle spins, nymphs and small marabou jigs. All the articles were heavily live bait-oriented, though.