What are your favorite Bluegill and Shellcracker flies and lures?

Hi Folks,

I know everybody has their favorites. I like to use foam pushers (Dremel bugs) and spongy spiders mostly for my surface Bluegill flies. I use my Dixie Bug, Gill Getters, Jitterbees, Damselfly and Dragonfly nymphs, wet flies, among others for my subsurface Bluegill flies. I like to use scuds mostly for Shellcrackers (Redear Sunfish).

I have caught some pretty big Bluegill (2.25 and 2.75 lb.) on live worms and crickets one or two inches below one or two split shots on the bottom by watching any slight movement in the rod tip from the bank. But on a boat I can't watch rod tip movement so I find floats or slip floats can do the job. For lures, small beetlespins have always been my favorites.

What works for you?

Accardo & Pecks Bream Killer for topwater. I remove the rear hook from a Rebel Crickhopper popper, tie on a 2 ft leader, and tie on that fly. The Crickhopper catches bass and some of the larger bluegill.

Charlie Brewer Charlie Bee spinners work good as a subsurface lure. I've also caught em on 1/16th oz Road Runner jug heads w/ crappie thunder bodies. Wax worms and crickets have accounted for my biggest catches.

We use many methods to fish for bluegill and green sunfish (with the odd pumpkinseed or longear thrown in)..
If we're fishing the dam, we'll usually stick a waxworm or two on a small hook under a bobber. If we're fishing weeds, we'll usully put a tiny midge fly tipped with
something under a bobber and just flip it out a few feet.
Our favorite is to tie up to flooded timber in about fifteen feet of water and slowly let out line with either a weighted fly or a waxie on a hook. We never take a finger off the line and we let it go as deep as it will drop, then slowly reel and yo-yo the line back up. As soon as you find the zone, you'll know it with your finger on the line. We lose a few that wrap around the tree limbs deep, but still boat plenty.
If we're doing cast and retrieve, I like a micro craw or frog, but the biggest gill I've causght was on a firetiger Worden's Roostertail. - Roberta

We fish for bluegill with redworms, wax worms and meal worms under a slipbobber. After the spawn we locate them in about 20' of water about 10' deep. This is a great idea for the forum.

I use a 1/32 beetlespin in catabla (dark green body/yellow stripes) on a ultralight rod with 4# line. Small rooster tails in yellow, green or orange work well for me.

As far as live bait I use crickets, hard to beat a cricket for bream. I use pinks for shellcracker.

I love to bream fish, almost as much as I love to fish for crappie.

A 4 inch black power worm is killer on big shellcrackers when bedding.
I use wax worms in early spring and once the flies hatch, I move to crickets and use them until water drops below 70 again in the fall

I like to use a red wiggler on a drop shot rig. Caught a lot of big ones like this.

At Tunica we put a cricket on a crappie jig in April and May and catch as many crappie as we did without the cricket but you can also bet on a few bream. It is a big help on days where the crappie might aren't right on the brush, cuz the bream usually are.

I find when bream are bedding that a pinch of a nightcrawler on a hook with a split shot right on the bottom is unbeatable.

The biggest bream I ever caught was on a copper colored micro rattle trap.

Topwater poppers and flies are fun, but maggots are my top live bait. They work on crappie, catfish and trout, too!

marathon popper, chenile spider, bead head nymphs...crickets, crawlers, maggots for live bait..caught my biggest, 2lb even, on 2 lb test and 1/64 oz marabou jig.(shellcracker).

Beetle spins are by far my favorite bait. All colors work good, but personal favorite is orange w/ black strips. Its a bad fishing day if you can't get a bite with a beetle spin.

Crickets are my favorite live bait option.

I mainly fish on the bottom with 2 or 3 red worms or a whole night crawler. If you hook the crawler in the ring they stay on better. I try to stay away from the bank to avoid the lil ones. I usually fish anywhere from 18' to 25' for the bigger shellcrackers on a main point or a deep cove.:)

Crickets with a small cork on a bream buster. Funnest fishing I have ever done...

Mealworms and crickets on a drop shot rig with an ultralight spinning combo. Also an assortment of nymphs and poppers on a fly rod- depends on the mood the fish are in that day.

Best baits:

Bluegill = leeches
Shellcrackers = 1/3 nightcrawler

Write it in stone.

hi yakll, we have a really neat oppoirtunity here in ga/sc line> the bream and shellcrackers really bunch up behind the clarkshill damn in the coldest weather and you can catch alot by using a wax worm and a cricket on the same hook.Dont know why but that combo does much better than anything else we have seen.My lady and i have honestly out fished others around us 3or4 to 1 consistantly like that. And dont be shy about changing depyhr either about half our really big bream came from 20 ft deep[ in 30=40ft of water in cold nasty weather!We were enjoying great fresh bream fish fries when most were waiting on spring to get here!

I agree with Dutch 100%. Slow rolling a beetle spin is hard to beat. Mepps Aglia in size 0 red and black with gold blades is also a killer. For live bait it's hard to beat a cricket. I sometimes put one on a beetle spin to help when they just want to nip at the bait.

You can't go wrong with crickets. My dad used to go and pick catalpa worms off a tree when I was little, but I don't remember what time of year he went. I have since found somebody who sells catalpa wroms and I can't wait to use them.

definitely crickets, grasshoppers, waxworms, & earthworms ... in the live bait catagory. But, I also have had good success with stalk borer worms, especially in the late Summer.

For artificials - Pop-eye jigs, Roostertails, Roadrunners, Lisk "Lil Skunk" & "Pole Cat" lures, "No-Name" lure, and some small crankbaits. ........ cp :cool:

In the spring when the bream are on the beds and hot as a two-dollar pistol, I love throwing a tandem rig on the fly rod. The top bug is a #6 popper with about 18 inches of leader tied to the hook. The bottom fly is a very slow sinking #8 black and white chenille bodied wet fly with short rubber legs. The top fly acts as a strike indicator as well as preventing the bottom fly from sinking to deep and getting hung up. This rig can be worked very slow and allowed to sit in the strike zone for an extended time, which you can not do with just a wet fly. Doubles are common.

live bait- waxworm
fly-sponge spider
lure-Never caught any on a lure, though i have been experimenting with Berkley powerbait grubs.

It's hard to beat a waxworm for bluegill. Never have caught any giants, other than a large shellcracker that was eat up with red spots. I'm going to start fishng deeper with some waxworms and redworms and see what i can find. I like the dropshot idea.

Bluegill: lite grafite rod, 4lb test,big red worm hooked one time through the nose. float, slpitshot, hook.If that doesn't work, taking the float off will.
crackers:small slpitshot,3/8in.of nightcrawler.they feed on snails and that will get em.good topic and good luck.

i am new to the forum and i think it is great! my favorite sunfish lures are canyon plastics 1/64th oz tubes in red/yellow or just yellow. i tip the jig with maggots or worms most of the time. i usually catch more sunfish crappie fishing then if i try for them :confused:.

Oyster,

I sometimes use a #10 scud dropper on two feet of 6lb. test tied to the hook bend of a #8 foam pusher too on the fly rod. So you're not alone on the dropper rigs. Works great but casts like crap.

Thanks for the input folks, keep going. Great to see and know what works for folks. I have learned a lot of new ideas and methods already :D.

Small caterpillars do work well. I've used them before, but they are time consuming to gather and they are seasonal.

I use a prince nymph as a dropper under a popper. They nearly always hit the nymph but the popper serves as a good float. Thats what I have had success on.

catalpa worms are defenitely by far and away the best live bait but there arent that many trees with them on them anymore.

Finally, I knew somebody would post it. I agree huntin-n-fishin. A catalpa, or how ever you spell it, is hard to find and the worms are excellent. My granddad said they use to use them, but they would cut the head off and use a match stick to turn them inside out. He said they were about white. I told him that sounded like to much work, especially having to do it so often. I never tried it, but like the worms. Matter of fact, since I moved I spotted me a catalpa not far from where I'm building my house.

Crickets, catalpa worms, pink worms, marathon poppers and beetle spins are my favorites.

My home town has Catalpa trees scattered all over it. But you never see any worms, i think they sprayed them. I do know of a few that has them out side of town, but they don't produce them every year. When they do i gather as many as i can find and freeze them. You ain't gonna believe me, but i've taken some out that had been in there for a couple weeks. Got to the river and opened the lid and a few were crawling around. Best bait there is in my opinion for just about any kind of fishin, especially the cats. One of the worst fights me and the wife ever had was over her throwing my worms out hehe...izzy

thought mine was gonna throw me out!!! had em in a plain brown paper sack with some leaves...she opened the sack...and she's really scared of worms...didn't know she could scream like that!

these guys will outfish Catalpa worms, red worms, crickets, and most any other live critters:

http://www.ipm.uiuc.edu/bulletin/art...rticleNumber=8

They are "stalk borer" worms ... what my Grandfather called "Horseweed Worms". We have them in roadside stands of Giant Ragweed plants.
I've caught various species of sunfish, Crappie, Bass, and Catfish on these worms.
The first picture is of a young worm ..... the older, bigger adult versions have the same "head", but the body color is almost completely white. I've never seen the worm in the second picture ... that I'm aware of.

One tip I can offer - get these worms down deep ... FAST !! The smaller fish will have them in a heartbeat, if you don't. (wish I had known about "drop shot" rigging back when I used them ;) ;) ) ....... luck2ya ...cp :cool:

Don't think i've ever seen those before, pappy. We've got plenty of Ragweed up here. Do you have to pull the weed to harvest them or are they visable...izzy

was find a stand of Giant Ragweed alongside a secondary road ... late Summer to Early Fall (depending on what part of the country you're in) ... and check the stalks for bore holes. They can be in any stalk from near pinkie finger size to the thicker than your thumb ones. Smaller stalks will usually be a yellowish color, rather than the green they usually are, when a worm is in them. They may even have a knot on them, usually around the bore hole ... but, there's always a bore hole (no hole, no worm). What we would do, is take a hunting knife and cut the stalk off between the hole and the ground ... then cut off the side branches. We had a burlap sack to put the stalks in. Occasionally, we would split a stalk a little, then run the split up the stalk (with fingers) until we could see the worm. Some stalks may have holes but no worm ... some may have more than one hole and/or more than one worm.
I guess you could go ahead and cut the stalk open and get the worm out, and put it in a container. Don't know why we didn't do that, but you know how set in their ways a Grandpa can be :D

Here's a link to some pics of Giant Ragweed: http://www.ppws.vt.edu/scott/weed_id/ambtr.htm

Some things you need to know ..... wear long sleeves - the leaves & stalks are "hairy" and may make your arms "itchy". Tuck pants legs into socks - ticks are active at that time of year. Spray your hands, arms, legs, neck, clothing, etc with some good Deet spray - chiggers, ticks, mosquito's, and other biting insects like to hide in those weeds. Do your "hunting/cutting" in the early hours of the day, while it's still relatively cool, and you'll probably be less bothered by the insects (but, I'd still follow the clothing & Deet spraying proceedure - just to be on the safe side ... LOL!!) At least you won't sweat quite so bad, with those long sleeved shirts & pants tucked, in the cool of the morning. Don't know why we never did that - seems like we always got there around mid morning ... when the air temps had already passed the 75deg mark ... LOL!!
We always found our weeds along an old country side road, out in farm country (which just happened to be the road that led to the lake we were heading towards ;) ) Don't know if that had anything to do with worms being in the weeds ... but, the county road boys never cut that close to the fences, and they never sprayed the weeds (that I was ever aware of), like they did around more traveled roads or those with a lot of houses along the way.

Stalk borers will get into several other kinds of weeds and plants ... but, I wouldn't go cutting on someones corn stalks or food plot plants - man could get shot doing that ... LOL!!

It didn't seem to make much difference which way you put them on a hook ... under the head and out the tail, or in the tail and out under the head. We just threaded 'em on a small light wire hook and put 'em deep (>15ft) - usually around bluff walls or deep rocky points. Bluegill, and Longear Sunfish (what my G'PA called "redbellies") were the usual target, but ... like I said, you just never knew what would be the next fish to grab one ....... cp :cool:

Yep, thats the same as we got here. Theres groves of it along the rivers here. It's so thick i don't think you could get through it, not that i'd want to. I'll sure check for some this summer. I've got so much advise and tips from everyone here i started a (things to remember list) so i would'nt forget. Thanks cp...izzy

I read an article years ago that said to catch bream in the winter. Find some "goldenrod" that grow usually near "queen annes lace" cut the stalks down and store them for later. Is that what you are talking about? Thanks C-rex

This is about all I use for gills. You can catch more on crickets and worms but I catch bigger ones with this. Its 1¼" long.

c.p. used to fish golden rod borers in farm ponds comin up...lite line, tiny hook, bb shot...throw next to drain pipe (deepest water) ...catch the biggest 'gills in the pond!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crappisaurusrex

I read an article years ago that said to catch bream in the winter. Find some "goldenrod" that grow usually near "queen annes lace" cut the stalks down and store them for later. Is that what you are talking about? Thanks C-rex

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Here's Goldenrod article, tells about two borer insects that inhabit it : http://www.gpnc.org/goldenro.htm

The European Corn Borer worm & some other stalk borer worms, are the larvae of certain moths. These tend to inhabit large stalk plants, like corn or Giant Ragweed, and are the worms I'm referring to (and what my Grandfather called "Horseweed worms").

I don't think the Goldenrod gall worms get quite as big as the stalk borer worms. But, most any grub or bug larvae/worm can be used as "bream bait" !! I've used the potato bug larvae, Cedar Tree "bagworms", Ant Lions, Wasp nest larvae, and some other grubs/worms that I don't have the foggiest idea what they were :D to catch Bluegill & other sunfish.

Just use whatever is available in your area .... or a artificial of similar size/color/shape. ............. luck2ya ......cp :cool:

Squirrel tail jigs are a great bait for bream. The lure that was the best I ever used for bream was a tator bug and they dont make them anymore from what I was told. Black ants work great too, if you can keep from gettting bit trying to hook one up.