Bluegill Behavior?

[F14A-B]

Yea, I'm not so sure that hunting bluegill is a marketing tool to find bass or big bass or #s of bass... I can honestly say, I've never launched my boat, saying " geez, gotta find the bluegills to catch bass" bluegills are everywhere, I mean everywhere. When it does seem important is when bass are bedding & when bluegill are bedding. Learning prey types in your water is important, but still just a piece or two of the puzzle.

[A-Jay]

Yea, I'm not so sure that hunting bluegill is a marketing tool to find bass or big bass or #s of bass... I can honestly say, I've never launched my boat, saying " geez, gotta find the bluegills to catch bass" bluegills are everywhere, I mean everywhere. When it does seem important is when bass are bedding & when bluegill are bedding. Learning prey types in your water is important, but still just a piece or two of the puzzle.

 

Agreed -

 

 But I'd definitely like to be at least seeing some bait in the area's I'm target than not, especially while I'm trying to put something together.

 

A-Jay

[Catt]

I think ya gonna find they both hang out in the same neighborhood!

[Matthew2000]

That is an interesting thought because it would make sense but i have seen bass and sunnies swimming around next to each other with not even a concern.  Of course eventually the bass will decide to eat and it must set off something because the sunnies will scatter, well at least the lucky ones will the others become the main course.

I never have seen BIG bass swim around with bluegill only dinks and mediums.

[gr8outdoorz]

All the advice here has been great and i will also add that if there is vegetation like lilly pads or grass you can also hear the bluegill popping.  I know when i pull up to a lilly pad field the first thing i do is sit and watch for lily pads to be moving around and then i listen for the tell tale sound of the bluegills popping bugs off the surface.  If i don't hear or see one of those i move on and if get both then i sit tight and work the areas well because i know there are fish in there waiting to be caught.

 

And if you are ever looking to get into fly fishing or taking a kid out fly fishing nothing beats spawning blue gills.  I was at a small pond in my office complex last year and caught fish on 37 consecutive casts and a few of those were LM.  They are super aggressive when spawning and a slow sinking spider seems to do the trick on most days.

 

 

 

This right here has saved the day MANY times on my home lake! Starting mid-summer, I have days where all I will do is move from mat to mat listening for the "popping" sound. When I find one, I sit back to let the noise calm down then start slaying them.

[Jtrout]

This right here has saved the day MANY times on my home lake! Starting mid-summer, I have days where all I will do is move from mat to mat listening for the "popping" sound. When I find one, I sit back to let the noise calm down then start slaying them.[/quot

When u hear the popping from the blue gills what do you throw?

[gr8outdoorz]

This right here has saved the day MANY times on my home lake! Starting mid-summer, I have days where all I will do is move from mat to mat listening for the "popping" sound. When I find one, I sit back to let the noise calm down then start slaying them.[/quot

When u hear the popping from the blue gills what do you throw?

 

Depends on the day...and my mood! Hahaha!

 

Most of the time though, I start off with a frog or mouse on top of the mats. If I am not getting any action there, I will start punching the mats. When punching, I will start looking for timber first as bluegill like to stack up around timber. I will also look for any irregularities in/around the mat. I also like to throw unweighted senko's in holes in the mat or ones I have created by punching.

[RoLo]

Yea, I'm not so sure that hunting bluegill is a marketing tool to find bass or big bass or #s of bass... I can honestly say, I've never launched my boat, saying " geez, gotta find the bluegills to catch bass" bluegills are everywhere, I mean everywhere. When it does seem important is when bass are bedding & when bluegill are bedding. Learning prey types in your water is important, but still just a piece or two of the puzzle.

 

Given a choice, predatory fish generally prefer soft-finned prey over spiny-finned prey,

for example shiners & shad over perch & bluegills. In any case, predators often have no choice,

so abundance and opportunity usually dictate what's on the menu. Bass and bluegills are both members

of the sunfish family, so as Catt pointed out, they both gravitate to the same habitat.

A bass doesn't have to look real hard to find bluegills (when I used to snorkel, it was hard to find a spot without bluegills).

 

We've all heard it a hundred times: "Find the bait, and you've found the bass".

But bass are predators near the top of the food pyramid, while bluegills constitute a much greater biomass

near the base of the pyramid. There simply are not enough bass in the lake to accompany every school of bluegills.

For this reason, like A-Jay said: "I'd like to see some bait in the area" (me too).

A more appropriate adage might be: "Find the bass, and you've found the bait" 

 

Roger

[WRB]

Josh,

Bluegills are sometimes grouped together with green sunfish, red ears or shell crackers, warmouth, pumpkin seeds and called bream. They key to knowing what bluegill eat is looking at the size of the mouth, it's small. If the bluegills have a very small mouth they eat very small prey like insects, larve, worms, snails, eggs and fish fry. Red ear for example grow bigger with larger size mouth and can eat minnows, small crawdads, larger insects, grubs and worms and are not a true bluegill, same with green sunfish and warmouth.

Bluegill spawn in warmer 70-75 degree water, shallower water than bass and have pie plate size nest in colonies.

Adult size bluegill live in the same general area as smaller ones just a little deeper.

Tom