Got to be in Ft Myers next week and would be interested in a guided trip for redears or bull gills. Anybody know of any panfish guides in the area who specialize in these? Most panfish guides I have found down there are after crappie.
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Got to be in Ft Myers next week and would be interested in a guided trip for redears or bull gills. Anybody know of any panfish guides in the area who specialize in these? Most panfish guides I have found down there are after crappie.
Would consider driving over to Okeechobee if somebody knew of a good panfish guide over there.
Capt. Bob Marvin is an excellent guide. He does fly fishing (mostly saltwater), but I know he is a bluegill fan as well.
If you're interested, his cell is 239-877-9162.
Actually what you should do is make a stop in middle Tennessee on your way back, and fish with me. I specialize in trips for trophy bluegill, and my bluegill are bigger than what you'd catch in Florida. My rates are also less than what you'll pay down there. I just Googled it and you only live about 175 miles from me.
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They get pretty darn big in FL.......
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Absolutely they get big down there - bigger than most places in the country, and as far as public water goes, probably bigger than anywhere outside of southern California. But the difference between an intensively-managed private water, and an unmanaged public water, even the best public water, can be pretty significant. Bluegill in the 24-oz. range are still uncommon on even the best public waters, but they were a regular thing last year on the ponds I guide on; and this year I expect two-pounders to be a regular thing. I weighed two last year that were 28 oz. or better, and the bigger one weighed 31. I've only been working with these ponds for a little under four years, meaning they're just now starting to reach their potential. There will be some sho-nuff whoppers caught this year.
Yeah you have some nice fish. Richmond Mill Lake also is known for oversized gills.
Richmond Mill has some nice ones - and they charge $1,000 per person per day to fish for them, or $600 per person for groups of four or more. I charge $300 a day for one or two people.
That's insane!Quote:
Originally Posted by tnpondmanager
yeah i know they are high, i contacted them before. i was thinking of taking my grandfather out there for his birthday but the price tag sttered me away....
Their prices are a big part of why I embarked on my guiding ponds venture four years ago. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of prime destinations across the country for trophy largemouth, and probably dozens or hundreds for trophy smallmouth, walleye, trout, muskie, etc. - but outside of RM, four years ago there wasn't another spot anywhere that anglers could travel to for a day of fishing and have a very good chance of landing a two-pound bluegill.
How do you turn a pond into a trophy pond?
To manage a pond for trophy bluegill, you do just about everything the opposite of what you would do to manage the same pond for trophy bass. You want lots of small bass under 14" - you want the largemouth to overpopulate - so that most of the bluegill hatched each year never make it past the fingerling stage. This drastically reduces competition for food for the remaining larger bluegill, such that they grow many times faster than they would with more competition. In my best big bluegill ponds, I often catch as many or more small bass in a day of fishing than bluegill - and the bluegill often average as much or more in weight than the bass.
It's also vitally important to not have species in the pond that compete with bluegill for food. Species that make great forage for largemouth, such as threadfin shad, golden shiners, tilapia, etc., will destroy any chance of having giant bluegill if those other species are plentiful. I've never fished (or seen) a top-shelf trophy bluegill pond or lake that had a robust population of any of the above species. A client of mine that has a 60-acre lake is starting over from scratch because the pond management company that managed his lake before I came along tells people that gizzard shad won't hurt bluegill size, and even though bluegill and shellcracker are his favorite fish, they talked him into stocking GS into his lake, and now we're having to start over to get rid of them. We fed the fish aggressively for three years and the bluegill never got half as big as the bluegill in any of my ponds that don't have shad.
There's more to it, but that's a good start. The key is not thinking like one would think if managing the pond for bass. I posted an article on this subject on my blog a few months ago:
Bluegill Adventures
Guys, we're getting way off topic. Let's keep this to "Panfish guides near Ft Myers,FL".
Feel free to start another thread, though.