Anyone ever think that panfish may be line shy?

[OmegaDPW]

Had an old Bass Pro fiberglass rod for years without a reel. Finally decided to buy a cheap reel to stick on it and see how it would work. The reel came loaded with 10lb mono. I really don't want to swap it out to something lighter (at least yet) but was curious if anyone ever noticed bluegill or crappie being line shy? 

 

 FWIW, I'm planning on throwing a weighted bobber with a marabou jig under it. The weighted bobber should give enough casting distance until I break down and swap out the line. 

 

Thanks!

[TnRiver46]

 They will bite where your line touches the surface of the water so they can definitely see it . Threading the eye of the small hooks and casting and presentation will be much better with 4-6 lb, I’d at least add a leader of lighter line 

[MediumMouthBass]

When im going for them ill use 4lb mono, but ive caught alot of them only 8, 10, and 12lb line when fishing smaller stuff for bass. The reason those of us who panfish alot use smaller diameter/lighter line is for casting/tieing it onto such small lures, also its more fun to bring them in on 4lb or 2lb than any other type of line.

 

Now dont go to light if you are using a weighted bobber, i throw only trout magnet bobbers on mine and the line does fine, but when im fishing anything weighted (like a rocket bobber) sometimes the line can snap very easily if you cast a certain way. So maybe 6 or 8 would be ideal depending on the bobber.

 

They arent line or human shy, a few years ago when i first got into fly fishing there were dozens of monster bluegill right off the bank, we could both see each other. And the bright orange floating line kept slapping the water right on top of them, well they didnt seem to mind that much. 10-15 of them are now in the freezer.

[gim]

29 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Threading the eye of the small hooks and casting and presentation will be much better with 4-6 lb

 

I would also downsize to 6 pound line.  That's what I use on my panfish setups.  Most of my panfish are relatively small in size here though.  Less than a pound for sure.

 

Perhaps if you were targeting the enormous slabs that @Team9nine was, slightly bigger line might be a better idea.  I think that's more the exception than the norm.  At one point this spring he was catching bigger crappies than largemouth 😲

[MN Fisher]

My panfish rigs are 8#-10# braid (for casting distance) with a 10'-12' 4#-6# leader...except the bobber rig...that one has 24' of 6# since I use a slip bobber and sometimes the crappie are almost that deep.

[OmegaDPW]

Thanks all. I went out this morning with the "new" setup. The marabou jig didn't get a bite, so I switched to a Beetle Spin with the tiniest jighead and curly tail grub that I could find. Casting the jig was no problem with the weighted bobber and I wound up with 6 bluegill and 1 crappie with a semi-brisk retrieve. Nobody seemed to care that the line was 10lb mono. 😉 It actually worked well enough that I may leave it on there a bit. 

[fin]

On 5/14/2024 at 11:46 AM, TnRiver46 said:

They will bite where your line touches the surface of the water so they can definitely see it .

 

I've seen them do that a lot (and I don't even fish for them), but I don't know if they are really seeing the line or if they are just sensing the disturbance on the surface where the line is cutting through the water. Maybe vision, maybe lateral lines, maybe both.

[throttleplate]

Fished the last 2 weeks in detroit lakes minn area for crappie using braid #20 to a #12 mono leader only because thats the mono i had laying around other than #30 fluoro.

Tied to a 1/32, 1/16 and 1/8 jigs tipped with a minnow and using slip bobber and they munched out no problems.