"Ben" wrote in message
m...
Does anyone ever talk about Bluegill fishing?

I remember catching these little guys by the dozen when I was a kid.

I don't remember doing anything special to catch them. I usually caught
them while I was fishing for trout (I know warm water species vs cold
water species).

This makes me think that I remember catching them using cheese, or
salmon eggs, or marshmallows.

So, I was wondering if Bluegill really do bite on powerbaits,
powernuggets, and salmon eggs. I know from reading that they bite on
crickets and worms and minnows.

Anyone care to challenge my memories?

Thanks,

Ben


I lived in Louisiana for nine years very near the Atchafalaya Basin. Some
of my fondest memories are "bream" fishing. That is what they call
bluegills, although they have several species. Redears. Pumpkin seeds.
Chinquapin. Shell crackers.

People think of small fish, but they get pretty good sized. Once a friend
of mine caught a 20 ouncer. We would catch so many as big as our hand or
bigger that once we filled a 44 quart Igloo ice chest, one of us would
declare, "That's all I want to clean." One guy had a round cage we would
drag behind a boat, and it would scale them. At Toledo Bend, they had
things that looked exactly like commercial clothes dryers. You dumped your
fish in them, put in some quarters, waited for the buzzer, and all were
scaled.

But I never cleaned them without getting stuck about umpteen times.

If you hit them at the right time of year, and on a hump or a bed, there
isn't a lot of fishing that's any better. Worms, crickets, jigs, beetle
spins, a strip of squid, a small piece of shrimp, anything. And a slip
bobber worked very good to land it and have the bait drop straight down. We
used Buck's Black Widow graphite poles 10 to 16 foot long to swing it in to
them. Also used pushbutton reel setups.

Some really good fishing.

Steve