Bluegill Fly Rodders

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Comment by jim cosgrove on March 6, 2015 at 10:59am

you are right.had a nice baked striper dinner 2 summers ago.caught on a bluegill sized roadrunner on an ultralight.he got in to open water and nearly spooled me twice.well it was hot out and there was no releasing him.he did fight to death.

Comment by Andy is OptiMystic on March 6, 2015 at 10:55am

Hybrids have pretty much disappeared near me. They found that the breeding rate is higher than they thought (most but no all are mules) and a few Houdinis were getting through dams and mixing with the sea run stripers. They don't want to taint that stock, so they have started only stocking stripers that are the native sea run strain in my local lakes. 

Comment by jim cosgrove on March 6, 2015 at 10:52am

i hear ya andy-have caught bass that would be true trophies length wise but had no body mass.the head was the fattest part.we should have kept them and put in someones pond.thought about driving to a nuke lake today that opened the first.you can catch eating size cats all day long but i wont eat em out there.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on March 6, 2015 at 10:52am

BW -
"... I sold my bass boat about 6 years ago, bought a 16' jon boat with a 10 hp engine, and have caught more fish since. This year I've promised myself I'm going to pull out the fly rod and the long pole and check out a few more overlooked waters from the bank."

The net result of slowing down and being methodical. They say that leads to more fish.... Well, I'll be in a float tube.
I just may have them following me home!

Comment by Tony Livingston on March 6, 2015 at 10:49am

Hope your waters come through the winter unscathed, Jim....I fear it may be a sickening spring for a few folks however.

The only widespread fishkill I've ever suffered here in our ponds has been from Hybrid striped bass in the heat of the summer. Turns out, some pondowners down in Texas carry oxygen tanks with them when they fish for these brutes, most notably during the hotter, drought months, in order to revive and rejuvenate the fish before release. These fish can literally fight to the death.

Comment by jim cosgrove on March 6, 2015 at 10:44am

andy i rarely pay attention to those rate samples put out by our dnr.our dnr is operating on half the money of 10 years ago and the studies are old.the whole state is in a crappie boom cycle right now.several good spawns last several years.the bluegills have been declining.dont know if it is related.i pay much more attention to the local fishing forums and people i know in different areas.i catch a lot more crappies on flies fishing for bluegills than i ever have.

Comment by jim cosgrove on March 6, 2015 at 10:38am

thanks tony good to know.the winters have been the problem up her.winter kill is becoming a problem.the old limestone quarries give off an element that aids in oxygen deprivation,at least thats what their thinking.combined with almost 2 feet of snow coverde ice has devastated a couple really good bluegill fisheries.one had a complete kill last year.i remember a n indiana lake we used to vacation at and it would be like bathwater swimming in it but the fishing was always great in the evening.

Comment by Andy is OptiMystic on March 6, 2015 at 10:35am

A few years ago there was a big striped kill in the summer at a near by lake. I read an explanation by a fisheries biologist that was interesting. He said they didn't die from overheating, they died from expending energy faster than they could replenish it; basically starved to death swimming around in bath water.

Comment by Andy is OptiMystic on March 6, 2015 at 10:31am

Funny thing about this high temp discussion is that the remark I made about 100+ degrees was actually about air temp. I was talking about factors that invalidate using angler data to determine fish activity. I think the most fish are caught when the weather is ideal for fishing, not when it is ideal for fish. The better studies use catch rate - fish per angler per hour. But even doing that will give you some wildly varying numbers at times when the sample size is really low. There is also angler proficiency. The average fisherman out in bad weather is likely better at than the average fisherman in good weather. The point of all this is that we have lots and lots of really suspect data that we use to try to interpret what the fish are doing. It is almost impossible to prove or disprove any correlation.

Comment by Tony Livingston on March 6, 2015 at 10:27am

True, Jim, but some of our ponds are aerated at rates that give us two complete turns of the entire water column per day. There are no thermoclines established in those ponds, so surface temps are very close to the temps at depth.

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