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I'm on a quest for a citation bluegill now and i think it's going to be tough. Here are 3 of the larger ones we've come across recently. A citation gill has to be 11"; we've gotten right at 10" but i think that last inch is going to prove to be a challenge. I know these are just bluegills but i'm quite proud of them; you have no idea how many i've caught and how much time i'm putting into this; lol. Thanks for checking it out. Any advice for hunting the big panfish is greatly appreciated.
Those are whoppers! I'd be proud of them if I'd caught them, no doubt about it. But as you say, that last inch may be tough to get. Sorry I don't have any tricks to offer other than encouragement. Keep at 'em! You'll score one soon, I'm sure.
Great lookin gills, congrats.
Congrats, those are some very nice Bluegill. One year my fishing partner and I fished most weekends below the Chickamauga Lake Dam. We fished most Sat. & Sundays. We keep a log and caught one nice Bluegill out of about 3 or 4 caught. We ended the year filleting 4312 keepers. After catching all those nice Bluegills like yours we only cauaght 1 (one) over 10" (it was 11"). Good luck in your search and hope you do better than we did.
We fished with ul rod, 6 lb. Blue Stren line, crickets on a #6 aberdeen cricket hook with a #6 split shot (up about 6" or 8"). We used crickets. As a rule we fished the wing wall and along the water break between the moving water and the slack water. Hope this info helps.
Great gills and great eating there, but if you want to get that 11" one, you'll have to throw those 10's back for next season. 7 and 8's dont become 11's in one season so they have to have time to grow. Bluegills are my favorite fish to eat so i'd have a heckofatime tossing those back. Citation size up here is only 9".
thanks a lot guys, don't worry i've been tossing them back for next year and the next too, i love catching fish on the UL rod, i guess i shoulda specified: the fish laying on the tackle box is actually a "gillcracker"; mixture between a bluegill and a redear; but to be honest if it bends my rod i don't care what it's called hahaha
Definitely great gills you have there. You are right about that last inch. I catch a hundred or more every year in the 10 - 10 1/2 inch range, but only manage one or two beyond that.
Those are some nice ones......lots of fun to catch and for sure good eating.
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I have caught a lot of Bluegills in my lifetime (67soon)) I have had about 1/2 a doz. reach 10 1/2 " Funny thing about a ruler, they shrink those fish. I'm a little leary of people that catch, or say they catch, a lot of Gill's beyond 10" Put the ruler to them and you won't catch that many over 10", they will start showing up at 9- 9 1/2" Just sayi'n. Lot of difference between 9 & 11" fish..
I have caught many specie of fish......and lots of them. But I chase Gills because of the fun. I have caught many at the pound mark and a little over. I want that 2 pound Gill. I am hoping to get it on middle of this Winter. Try to read the InFisherman article about using tungsten jigs. I have been using them for the past month with great results on deep water. They will change the way you fish for Gills during Fall and Winter.
Regards
I am very fortunate to be able to fish Laurel Hill Lake in TN. Ten inch Gills are quite common.......and 11 and 12 inch Gills are not really uncommon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crappie 1
Regards
VERY nice gills you got there! Since you are asking about comments and advice on the 11" mark, here are mine, Find a local pond and start managing it for trophy gills, maybe even stock some hybrids if you want to go that route. Think about trying the coppernose bream which is not a hybrid, a little management, food and time you will be surprised at the outcome!
Wademaster, are you limiting yourself to your home state? If you're open to a little driving and don't mind a guide fee for a day, head over to middle TN next March and I can just about guarantee you'll catch one 11" or better in a day of fishing. You might beat 12":)
The Southern states seem to produce bigger fish than the Northern states on average. I think they have more food available year around than ours do. Michigan's record Bluegill came from Vaughn Lake, it weighed 2 lbs. 12 oz's. was 13 3/4" caught by Gary Sayler in 1983 Now that's a big one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alphahawk
The biggest gills I ever caught were caught by mistake on LARGE MINNOWS while fishing for crappie and trying to weed out the dinks by upsizing my bait, though I do remember one on a spinnerbait for bass one year that blew my mind, if you want that 11 incher, I suggest you keep pushing for them and find yourself a nice secleuded farm pond somewhere
Nice gills. Try getting in on small farm ponds with deep water and lots of snails. My son and I fished a pond yesterday loaded with big blues. These things hit 10 times harder than the ones in the big lakes around here. We must have caught 30 or more, most 10' or better. We were useing half a red worm on a small hook under a wieghted bobber. The smaller rig worked great with cold water temps. Have you tried fishing with Spikes (grubs)? I was planning to use spikes but couldn't find any yesterday. In the colder months up here in NY, that's the one thing big blues love are Spikes on a ice jig under a small float. Good luck and have fun.
Wow. Talk of 2lb gills makes me wanna go fish right now. Actually I've been in Tennessee the last few days on vacation. And farm ponds are where im fishing mostly. They seem to grow bigger fish of all species most of the time on average.
I'd have to say that 10-inchers are not quite common in Laurel Hill. I've fished it several times myself, and have caught a few that size out of there over dozens of trips spread out over thirty years, but 7-8" is more the average size, and they make a big deal about a 10" gill - I check the Facebook page for the lake now and then, and they have two photos for all of this year of 10" bluegill, and no photos of an 11", certainly not a 12". I know that an 11" was caught out of there two or three years ago, but that was the first one I had seen that big out of the lake in years. 11" bluegill are hard to come by in public water these days, in my experience. They pop up every blue moon, but they're decidedly an anomaly - fishing for bluegill that size on public water is akin to hunting for a 14-point buck on public-access land. It may happen, but you're just about as likely to get hit by lightning. There's far too much fishing pressure, and the average level of angler awareness about trophy bluegill is about forty years behind what the awareness is for bass: most bluegill anglers, when they happen upon a bed of big 'gills, keep every big one they catch and think nothing of it. But there have been numerous studies by fisheries biologists (Illinois, Utah, etc.) in the past ten years that show beyond a doubt that removing numbers of larger bluegill from a lake permanently alters the genetic profile of the entire bluegill population of the lake, skewing it toward smaller fish. Until catch-and-release catches on with bluegill anglers, fishing for an 11" fish in public water is self-torture. There are a handful of public lakes around the country that somewhat regularly produce 'gills that size, but it's a small handful, and even those lakes are giving up fish that size a lot less regularly than they did even four years ago.
Private, intensively-managed lakes, on the other hand, produce this size fish much more often. The most notable lake, Richmond Mill in North Carolina, has numbers of bluegill over two pounds, has become famous for them; but it costs $1,000 a day to fish it, or $600 per person if you bring three other people with you. That lake has been stocked since 2005.
There are several private ponds in middle Tennessee that have been intensively managed since mid-2009 by yours truly, and which will likely give Richmond Mill a run for its money come next March. And you don't have to be a millionaire to afford to fish them:)
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Thanks for the input. Give me some rates !!
Sure, no problem: as of the moment, I've lowered them due to business being slow. $300 per day for one or two people, or $400 per day for three or four people. I sent you a PM with my cell # so give me a call and we'll get it scheduled.
Okay. Thanks a lot
Walt I fish Laurel Hill 4 or 5 days a week a lot in Spring and or early Summer. I can assure you 10 inch Gills are quite common there. Two years ago they came up shallow in June and stayed there until September. It was like being in Heaven that Spring. I will look through my pics and see if I still have some from there and post.Quote:
Originally Posted by tnpondmanager
Regards
I'm just going by personal experience. I have not fished the lake as much in recent years as I did growing up; my grandfather and I had a couple really good trips back when I was in high school, trips where the bluegill averaged three-quarters of a pound each; but that was nearly thirty years ago. I've fished it a handful of times in the past three years, but mainly only from the bank which is pretty limiting on that lake. I caught several bluegill in the 9" range two springs ago down there (from the bank), and a couple shellcracker that would go 10", but I haven't seen a bunch of 10"s either for myself or anyone else. As many pictures as they take at that baitshop, I would think if they were common, that more than a couple a year would get photographed.
I just now went to the lake's Facebook page and did a little quick analysis. There are 51 photos of catfish posted for 2012, 27 photos of bass, 10 for bluegill. Out of the bluegill photos, two are the same photo of a string of 8-9" fish, and three more are of the same 18-oz. bluegill. There are six photos total, counting the three of the same fish, of bluegill that might go 10" - I say might because one photo is of a mess that a father and son caught, and there's one nice one that could've gone 10" but could also have been 9" but it's impossible to tell due to camera angle and not all of the fish being in the shot. So that boils down to four bluegill, max, caught all of this year from the lake, at least ones that were photographed, that even made 10". There were no photos of an 11" bluegill from this year, and one from last year. So one 11" and four 10"s have been photographed at the bait shop in the last two years. Two guys who flew in from San Antonio in July to fish with me caught three 11" bluegill in one morning's fishing.
But, if you have photos, photos don't lie.
Although, the original topic of the thread was how to catch an 11" bluegill - and unless Laurel Hill lake somehow has a contingent of fishermen unlike any others in our state in their ability to keep a secret, 11" bluegill are decidedly rare in that lake, just as they are in all but a handful of public lakes anywhere in the country. And I've been fishing that lake off and on for over thirty years and have never seen or heard of a 12" bluegill coming out of it.
I made a couple trips years ago to waters that were hours away, because I had read that pound-plus bluegill were common in those waters (Reelfoot was one of the destinations), and remember being pretty frustrated upon learning the fishing had been exaggerated, so I like to watch out for people contemplating such a trip. Of course I also enjoy fulfilling lifetime goals for bluegill fanatics, which is why I have worked so hard to make the ponds I guide on what they are.
Private water is where it's at for anglers who want to catch a trophy bluegill. Just my $.02...
:hesaid X 2, Good Post...
Thanks, Crappie1!
i've only seen one gill that was over 12''; it was caught in a pond that's totally secluded on a rooster tail; i'll be going there in the spring after deer season is done and over with; can't go now because of deer hunters; cant wait!
I would love to see a 12" Bluegill in a picture with a ruler on it plain enough to see it's 12" That would be awesome...
yep, hard to believe i know; my best friend hardly ever fishes and he called me to come to his place that evening to check it out; it was a monster; didn't even look real; i can get a pic of it but without a ruler
dang nice!
Those are some nice size Bluegills!
Guess these dont qualify for bluegills but these redears i got a few years ago were 13 and 11". Got em at Ky lake.
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...m_n/img033.jpg
Thanks, Bassaholic and CJ21!
I made a simple bump board for fish photos. A piece of plastic rain gutter and a ruler will do the trick. This will take the guess work out of the true size of the fish in photos.
The MN DNR used the same type of measuring device to check for slot fish violations.Attachment 106188
chaunc, those are some real slabs you have there; i caught some redears up to 12" earlier in the year on nightcrawlers and some very nice redbreasts also, and bob/mn those bumpboards do work great and their so simple to make and use too; nice gill also!
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here's one of those big redbreasts
I generally always measure the larger bluegill I catch. The only time I post photos without a ruler or scale, as a rule, is when the photos were taken by someone else (pond owner, for example) and I wasn't there to make sure a ruler was used. Here's a 10 7/8" bluegill and a 11.75" hybrid caught this year from ponds I manage:
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(Sorry, don't know how to delete attached images - was changing file sizes to get the photos to show up larger.)
Hey, that's a great idea...Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob/MN