The biggest blue gill I have ever seen.

[Ozark mike]

Holy panfish batman. Thats a good one there

[MaryB]

WOW dinner plate sized gill!

[richhodg66]

My wife got an itch to go fishing this weekend and wouldn't let it go, which I'm glad now she didn't. The four of us got some stuff together and went to a county lake a few miles south of us I had never fished at before. Set up on the face of the dam and had a great time, all of us caught a few. Besides blue gills, we caught quite a few baby large mouths, maybe they've recently stocked it. Nothing fancy, just fishing night crawlers under bobbers and some of those little fish weren't big enough to pull one under with much authority, so I put some heavier sinkers on and that helped. The small hooks we used were still too big, the little guys could rob bait without getting hooked. Completely catch and release, but I'd forgotten how much fun little pan fish are. It had been a few years sine I'd had a line in the water, I really should do this more.

[oldred]

Those are some nice Bluegill for sure, we have some really big ones in our pond here on the farm and while our biggest have been nearly the size of some you guys have been talking about they aren't quite that big (yet, I'm working on it). I stocked our pond several years ago with Bluegill., Redear, Channel cats and Bluecats, those big Blues have grown into real brutes! No one fishes this pond except me, my wife and the grandkids and I feed these fish everyday so they have an excellent chance to grow.

This pond is about fifty years old and spring fed but a few years back my idiot BIL brought some Bluegil and Bass he had caught from the Clinch river here in Tn and ruined the pond by releasing those wild fish in there, NEVER put wild caught fish in a farm pond or any other pond for that matter. Within just a couple of years every fish in the pond became contaminated with a parasite that showed as black specks in the meat and later the Bluegill came down with a type of infection that caused large growths mostly around their mouths. Rather than attempt a chemical water treatment (that likely wouldn't have worked anyway) I opted to drain the pond and divert the spring water around it, it sat dry for nearly four years but that eliminated any possibility of the problems returning. It probably didn't need to sit dry for that long but I just never got around to repairing the dam until 12 years ago, all that because that idiot dumped those fish in there!

[popper]

You know how to take the hook out of a bluegill, right? Say 'don't pee on me', hold the hook by shank - run hand down the back, moving spines down, hold tight. Pop out hook and into the bait bucket. Those spines HURT.