Bait busting the surface?

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

I've seen this scene play out 3-4 times in the last couple weeks:

Right around sunset in 2-4 feet of water, dozens of what apear to be 2-3 inch bluegills busting the surface all at once. Action lasts 2-3 burst of 30 seconds or so. My question is, is this feeding activity on the part of the sunfish or are they being forced to the surface by a predator like bass or walleye?

[nitro929]

throw a zarra spook on the boil and see what happens

[Tin]

I have witnessed this same thing a few times and it has always been otters.

[D4u2s0t]

I see similar activity on my lake, and an extremely high percentage of times if I throw my bait right into the frenzy, and just let it fall, i get a fish.  The bass, like most predators, will go after the easy meal, and if you're bait is slowly falling in a mix of fast moving fish, it will be the easy target.

[bilgerat]

It happened to us Saturday at around 7pm. We hooked into a few fish by throwing tubes into the boil. No braggin' fish caught, but it was fun for half an hour.

[Paul Roberts]

I don't believe I've seen bluegills jump -even to feed. They will make exuberant splashes when surface feeding. Small bass will jump to try and catch dragonflies.

Surging bass will simply move more water than the others, and it's often violent. Often it'll have a sucking sound with it -when they capture something at the surface.

Carp breach and roll a lot. But they don't usually have that fast violent surging sound, unless they leap clear -then it's pretty obvious it's a carp.

[Uncle Leo]

Try throwing a weightless Senko into the boil. If it is game fish they may think the Senko is a injured Blue Gill and take it.

[aarogb]

    It happens everyday on my home lake.  They are always White Bass though.

[DINK WHISPERER]

When i see this i throw a slow sink Spro BBZ-1 4" shad in the mix!