Stringer of Bluegills

Long time ago...14 years to be exact. Stringer of 42 bluegills that weighed 37lbs 12ozs from a private pond.'

Looks like that was a great day

Oh yeah. The guy that owned the pond fed them dead crickets so you would slay the fish with crickets. The first time we fished it we caught 130 fish on 150 crickets in 2 hours. We kept 87 bluegills...wore me out cleaning all of them and said...never again!

Sweet

That is why I never let anyone fish my lake because they would try to empty first trip

It's rare that private ponds or lakes ever have enough bluegill taken out of them to remain in proper balance. If you dont have a healthy bass population to keep them under control, bream tend to typically get out of hand pretty quick and become stunted size wise.

We built a 30acre lake in texas that we stocked with bluegill,crappie,f1 bass, and hybrid stripe. We have 8 feeders with high protein food going off about 4-6 times a day and the fish have. Been feeder trained since day 1. We have a pond management company thag comes and does surveys on all our ponds and the bilogist pretty much told us after the first 2 years the fish would be huge(theh are massive now) and that wed need to catch and remove the bluegill as often as we could or they would stunt and id say on average right now they weigh a pound apiece..so my brother incites neighbors an whoever over an has fish frys alot... there are thousands of bluegill in there and its amazing to watch them when the feeders go off..there are about 1500 hybrid stipe in there(theh dont reproduce..so we are told) and they weigh between 5-7lbs now..they look like giantpiranah at the feeders..an they will peel drag on ultra-light like you hooked into a king mackerel.

Im sure Clarence was specifically told to remove them

Thats a great haul right there n some mighty fine eating

That is awesome. I can tell you from my recent experience, a true 1 lb bluegill ain’t no joke. To be able to sit and just catch your fill of those would be as fun as any bass fishing to me.

Absolutely. The owner never wanted us to take out bass even though we would catch almost as many of them as bluegills on crickets. Lots of 1-2lb bass. That was 5 people fishing too.

So you have a Lake, but yet you constantly post up big stringers of bass that you keep from public lakes/rivers 🤭

In my youth we had a 3-5 acre pond. We caught bluegill by the cooler full. 100-200 at a time. No bass were ever kept. Until the day the beavers breached the dam, you could catch as many bluegill as you wanted. 10 years of that never hurt the fishing. Just stand near the feeder, cast out a hook baited with Del Monte corn and reel them in.

Busted! 😆

Lol

Lived in Central FL. on a lake that everybody fed the gills some kinda pellet.
Oh man at the big bluegill in that place. Some of the most fun I've ever had
wearing an ultralight. Caught hundreds of one pounders on sammich bread.

This is wrong information. Pond management is my business (been doing it for 13 years) and I have seen two ponds that were overcrowded by bluegill.

More times than not, there are not enough bass harvested out of ponds. The bass keep the bluegill in check, but there is nothing to keep the bss in check except us

I manage two 30 acre lakes in South Carolina. One we started from scratch and is one of the bet lakes I have ever seen. There has never been a bluegill taken out and the lake is I think 8 years old. The other lake already had fish but when we started managing it, any and all bluegill harvest ceased. This lake too is incredible.

Just think about it. What do bass eat?? Small bluegill among other things. Why would you take away the food producers by harvesting your big bluegill ?

Lefthorn, we are going to have to disagree on this one. And no it is not wrong information. As a general rule of thumb, in a properly balanced, properly fertilized pond or lake, you need to be removing 5 times the the poundage of bream that you are of bass to maintain a proper balance. LSU and a bunch of the AG colleges that have a fisheries management degree program recommend this ratio if not more. Here's an excerpt from some of LSU's published pond management literature.

"Whether you keep track of numbers or pounds of fish, most of the fish harvested from a bass-bream pond should be bream. A general recommendation is to harvest at least 5 pounds and as much as 10 pounds of bream for every pound of bass. In many instances, any bluegill which is caught should be removed from the pond, whether it is large enough to eat or not. Redear sunfish are not as prolific as bluegill and may be thrown back except when bream populations are extremely high. "

Yes, we will disagree then. I make my living managing ponds and part of my job is selling bluegill when ponds are overcrowded with bass and need to be replenished for the bass to continue to grow.

If I wanted to sell more bluegill I would be an advocate for harvesting bluegill, but that’s not the right way.

Lefthorn, my guess is that you are managing lakes for bass and more particularly big bass. The way to maximize growth and numbers is to provide all the food possible. Others enjoy harvesting, cleaning and eating lots of fish. By keeping lots of bream and a few bass the neighborhood fish fry is a sustainable resource. Neither is wrong IMHO but the goals and the strategy are vastly different.

Fishduck, yes, we mainly manage ponds for bass and there are different strategies for different scenarios. And I understand that, but I run into people all the time wanting to manage for bass that ask how many bluegill to harvest.

Ours was managed by American Sport Fish and another group. They always did the bluegill harvest by pounds and bass by numbers. They told us to keep every bass that we caught that was 14” or smaller. This pond also had shad stocked in it.

Lefthorn is the man. It all depends on how you want to manage your lake. If you want to manage for big bluegill you want the bass to be over populated and hungry.

Sold my lake two years ago after 45 years of management, worked with the state fisheries on how to manage this lake for 45 years ,not much anyone can tell me on lake management.

Fisheries management isn't one-size fits all...

I'd love to find a pond that needs some bluegills removed...... they sure are fun to catch.

And way better eating than a bass

Filet em up, grill em and make fish tacos. That’s how I eat bass