The biggest blue gill I have ever seen.

[frkelly74]

265697

.This is the biggest blue gill I have ever seen. We managed to get another one just like it when I took the G-kids fishing on a managed pond in an undisclosed location. WE were fishing for bass which were biting on big purple worms with white spots and /or purple worms with a flourescent green tails. I think the fish are so offended by these garish un-natural abominations that they attack them out of sheer anger. So these two gills were equally offended and attacked. We had to put them back, management regulations, but it was fun to watch them fight the big gills. Later I hooked something that just stopped letting itself be reeled. Just dead stopped coming in and was gone. The worm had a hook on it that was bent almost straight when i got it retrieved, but the line didn't break. Here are the bass that we kept.

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[Markopolo]

very awesome catch!!!!!

[rancher1913]

I am new to lake/fish management, why did you have to throw the blue gill back but could keep the bass. just stocked my lake but it will be 2 or 3 years before a keep-able fish can be cought.

[frkelly74]

As I understand it, The decision was made by the board of directors of the camp to manage for trophy gills and the bass have overpopulated the pond. You can keep a gill less than 9" long and you are not supposed to throw any bass back. I know this is unusual but it is the way they want to run the camp/ pond, so they do.
Turns out to be a lot of fun to fish that way.

[Huskerguy]

I loved catching blue gill in a pond in Nebraska years ago. We caught several master anglers from a private pond. They were 12" from end to end and 12" around the tallest area and man could they fight. Get a little ultra light and when want to stop and turn sideways, it's a tussle.

The people that lived on the lake told the story they were bobber fishing and we're catching some blue gill. As they were reeling them in the large mouth bass would swallow them and as the kids pulled the fish, now two, out of the water, the bass would spit the blue gill out. That must have been amazing to watch and before cell phone video!

I am guessing the kids had a blast as well which is what it's all about.

[LUCKYDAWG13]

looks like you had a good day congrats

[bedbugbilly]

Aw heck . . . you're supposed to tell everyone that those are typical "Michigan minnows"!

I'll bet you all had a great time and catching those will certainly give the grandkids some awesome memories. I don't think I've ever seen one that size. I think they certainly qualify for "bragging rights"!

[popper]

Blue gills eat bugs and worms, bass will eat the eggs and fry. Was fishing Ol Hickory years ago near the dam. Caught a big one I thought, bent over the med wight spinning rod pretty good. Pulled a blue gill from ~90 ft. And it wasn't very big!

[Wayne Smith]

And I'll bet you hooked a rather large snapper as well.

[Budzilla 19]

That was an awesome catch!! And bass in the pan are hard to beat!! Those kids are blessed to have you. Great memories.

[snowwolfe]

Nice bluegill!!! Did you have the opportunity to measure how long it was or how much it weighed? To bad you had to toss it back, they are delicious eating.
Here is an average size from our little 1 acre pond:
http://i.imgur.com/BD97FYC.jpg (https://imgur.com/BD97FYC)

[smithnframe]

Good eatin' too!

[rancher1913]

snowwolf, do you have to feed them or do anything special. does the moss stuff that floats hurt the fish any.

[richhodg66]

Ounce for ounce, nothing is as feisty on a line as a Bluegill. Fun little fish for sure, that is a very large one, don't think I've ever seen one that big.

[farmerjim]

Those look like coppernose bream. I have them in my pond. One day a friend of mine came by with 2 cane polls and some crickets. In 30 minutes we caught 20 bream, all over 2 pounds each and one just an ounce short of being in the top 10 state record. We still catch one every now and then, but the little species have gotten in and taken over. Nothing like fresh fish for a meal.

[Omega]

When I first got to TN, I went fishing in the river by Paris Tn, went looking for Bass or preferably a crappie or two. In GA, where I was stationed at, a 10" crappie was a rarity, so it bummed me out when I seen that here it was a 10" minimum to keep and 15" for bass. But when I started fishing, I caught 4 crappie above that size, then hit a place where the brim were at least 10". I ended up going home with a bunch of brim and 4 crappie, forgot all about the bass.

[bakerjw]

If you take a pristine pond with no fish in it and stock it with bluegill early in the year, you will be able to have keepers by the fall. If they eat, they grow.

Great bluegill. When I was in Scouts, Lake Roberts at the Ingersoll Scout Camp had enormous bluegill in it. Amazing how big they were.

[snowwolfe]

snowwolf, do you have to feed them or do anything special. does the moss stuff that floats hurt the fish any.

I don't know if we have to feed them but we do. Usually every night I toss out food for 5 minutes. The feeding usually starts in May and continues till mid October. Bluegills have a short digestive system and are supposed to be fed twice a day but we have never done that.
I do remove (via a flyrod and small popper) fish anytime I need bait for catfish. Maybe 15 or so a year. Pond is healthy and they seem to breed and spawn on a regular basis. Pond also contains largemouth bass.

[Mk42gunner]

I snagged a bluegill about the size of my hand one time, on a swim bait of some sort. The treble hook got it just back of the dorsal fin. I thought I had caught a six or seven pound bass from the way the rod was bent and the way the Zebco 33 was protesting.

Its been close to forty years and I still remember the fight that little guy put up.

Robert

[gnostic]

Seeing your Bluegill takes me back to the days when we ate fish on friday. do people still do that?

[EDG]

About 1960 my grandfather had a small stock tank dug in one small pasture to provide water for his milk cow.
A few years rocked on by and I found some perch in a creek near by. I took off my Tee shirt and used it for a net to trap a few fish in shallow water. I then carried the tiny fish in my wet shirt for a 1/2 mile and dumped them in the small stock tank.

The clock keeps running and it is 1966. Me and my baby brother went fishing in the little stock tank after seeing grasshoppers slaughtered by the fish. We had no luck so we left our fishing lines in the water and went to lunch on a smoking hot day.

After lunch we returned and his rod and reel were gone. Since he was only about 12 and did not swim that well I volunteered to do the search for the rod and reel. I took off my shoes and waded in. I located the rod in the deepest part of the tank and walked it out until he could take it and reel it in. It had a huge perch on the line. It was a little larger than the hand of a large adult male and was about 3/4" thick.

We still talk about that fish more than 50 years later.

[GhostHawk]

A 9 inch Bull Gill is in my opinion a trophy bar none. IMO a 10lb northern pike, 5 lb bass or walleye is nothing compared to the work it takes to find and convince a big bull to bite, then get it to the boat.

I've caught a couple, wife was laid up this year with back troubles but next spring we are going on the hunt for wild 10" gills.

Mostly I keep 5 to 8" gills for eating. Those big ones need to be thrown back to keep their gene's in the gene pool.

And I always said if bluegills got to 20-25 lbs I would not swim in Minnesta waters. They'd rip a leg off any time they felt like it.

I am happily into my second childhood and enjoying it immensely.

[gwpercle]

LIKE LIKE LIKE ... I'm hitting our like button .

Nice Catch !
Gary

[NC_JEFF]

The biggest I've seen was similar to yours, a 11yr old boy caught it on a family lake here in western NC it was the size of a dinner plate. Yes we threw it back I wanna see another kids face when its caught again

[Texas by God]

Seeing your Bluegill takes me back to the days when we ate fish on friday. do people still do that?The local cafe has a catfish special every Friday night and sells out every time. I've never been a fanatic fisherman but a cane pole and a stock pond bring back sweet memories. I thought I was hot stuff with the 9" bluegill I caught with a grasshopper as a child. I've been meaning to show you a neat little rod & reel I saw recently, gnostic. There was a thread where steel fishing rods were mentioned. This one would be high sport for blue gills or crappie!https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200805/cacd100919de0dfcc7a60ba98f3f500e.jpg

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[Dimner]

265697



... that's it. I'm coming up there. Even though I don't know where it is. I'm gonna have to start trying every pond i see!

[MaryB]

Trolling for walleye in a small lake I had a bluegill smash the spinner rig I was using. Huge fish, I should have had it weighed, might have been a state record! I released it since nothing else was biting that day... wind was ripping and water was to rough to really be fishing. When you have 3' waves on a tiny lake it is bad! The bigger lake we wanted to fish was just across the road and it had waves coming over the road...

[MT Gianni]

I caught a 14" one in Idaho 40 years ago. I have not lived near bluegill water in a long time.

[white eagle]

that is a dandy for sure good job

[quilbilly]

The most beautiful fish mount I have ever seen was two 3# bluegill, a male and female, in spawning colors. A 25# steelhead is nowhere near as impressive as a 3# bluegill.

[contender1]

NC Jeff,, you aren't far from me,, (I graduated from RS,) and yes,, we do have some big bluegills in our area. It's been a while since I checked,, but I believe the NC State Record was caught in WNC from a farm pond. I also knew a kid many years ago,, who showed me a frozen bluegill he had caught. It would have broken the State record IF,, IF,, he had taken the time & effort to get it weighed & certified. The State record is over 4 lbs.
HUGE fish like that are true trophies.

[swheeler]

That is the biggest blue gill I've ever seen, sweet!:drinks:

[Drm50]

Lots of Bluegill fishing around my area. Enough that I would never have to eat bass. I have never caught a 12” Gill, let alone 2 pounders by the dozen. Best me a buddy did one time was 37 gills that weighed 21 lbs. Those were average 10”+. One summer evening while wade fishing for Small Mouth I caught a Rock Bass 13 7/8”, just enough under I couldn’t claim 14”. I don’t keep fish in the summer around here.

[kbstenberg]

Some one earlier said most of the larger gills should be put back. I totally agree. With modern advancements the intelagent fisherman can decimate a lake in less than a year. I have seen it twice.
My limit is 6 per day unless i have a couple meals in the freezer, Then i may keep 3. An i never keep any over 8"
There is no reason to believe me. In a 5 year period (winter fishing) i fished the same exact spot 3 times a week from freezup to black ice. I never caught less than 25 fish a day, with half being over my 8" limit. Minnesota put special regs. on this lake. To increase the northern quantity and size. To this day i haven't had as good fishing. An that happened in just one year.

[gnostic]

The local cafe has a catfish special every Friday night and sells out every time. I've never been a fanatic fisherman but a cane pole and a stock pond bring back sweet memories. I thought I was hot stuff with the 9" bluegill I caught with a grasshopper as a child. I've been meaning to show you a neat little rod & reel I saw recently, gnostic. There was a thread where steel fishing rods were mentioned. This one would be high sport for blue gills or crappie!https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200805/cacd100919de0dfcc7a60ba98f3f500e.jpg

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

I mentioned my uncle heated up a steel fishing rod up to burn/remove an obstruction from a 22LR barrel... I think eating fish on Friday was a greek orthodox religious custom years ago... Very cool stick, pan fishing with it should be great fun...

[Ozark mike]

Been pulling trout and a few squawfish out of the river here some good ones too dont know the size but sure do taste ok

[Minerat]

Nice fish!! I was fishing with my wifes uncle in a small lake in the Poconos one fall and we started catching big blue gill when fishing for bass with minnows. He said just throw this trash fish on the bank and let the birds have them. We're talking ones about the size of a 8" plate. We don't see that size in Colorado, they were the biggest I have ever caught. When he was not looking I nudged them back in the water, it would have been a waste.

[tryNto]

In the early to mid-'60s, my grade school days, Fish Friday was the thing in the Los Angles Unified School District in CA. I remember being told it was to do with the Catholic Church.

Nice B-Gill always loved to catch and eat them.

[blackthorn]

My best buddy in grade school was Roman Catholic. No meat on Fridays but fish or something else (usually pasta) was OK. He was really appreciative of a Friday invite to dine at our house! Seems that rule don't apply anymore. Like a lot of things, rules change according to organizational needs I guess.

[PbHurler]

missed breaking the record by 1.5oz......

266029

https://www.5newsonline.com/article/news/local/boy-catches-bluegill-in-tahlequah-pond-almost-beating-a-33-year-record/527-b4d8b278-f25d-423c-bf6d-9bdc09e197bb

[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.