Few Warmouth and Shellcrackers were mixed in.

Comment

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 22, 2011 at 9:10am

I've personally seen this happen in multiple waters close to me: really large bluegill show up in a lake, the word gets out and the lake gets hammered by anglers, within a couple years all the big bluegill are caught out, and the lake never produces big ones again.  I saw it happen just a year ago to a 60-acre lake near me that's managed by TWRA.  I had caught some very healthy mid-sized bluegill the year before from the lake and had made a mental note to try it the next year; when I went back to it last March I caught several big 'gills close to a pound. 

 

But evidently other anglers were catching them too, because the folks who run the bait shop at the lake posted on their website that they couldn't believe how many big bluegill were coming out of that lake.  It only took a couple months of intense angling pressure - now the big ones are rare and the bluegill have returned to their unremarkable size structure that the lake had for years.

 

I saw the same thing happen about twenty years ago to another public lake.  I discovered the big 'gills on the tail end of their presence in the lake: on a day I was catching them, I saw an angler in a boat who told me he used to catch huge bluegill but now they were gone.  I had three trips in which I caught fifteen to twenty bluegill each trip that averaged around fourteen ounces each time.  Then a year later I caught one one-pound bluegill out of the lake, and that was the last big bluegill I ever saw in that lake.  Now the bluegill in the lake average about two ounces.

Comment by Walt Foreman on June 22, 2011 at 8:53am

There have been studies by multiple state DNRs in the past twenty years that have concluded that big bluegill, just like larger specimens of any other species, can be fished out.  It was once believed that bluegill couldn't be fished out, and that keeping a lot of them was always beneficial, but now states such as Illinois, Minnesota, and others have done studies in which they found that populations of large bluegill can be quickly fished out even in large bodies of water, and once the large specimens are gone, it's hard to bring them back.  A phenomenon has been discovered whereby the removal of large adult male bluegill, the "bulls," can permanently negatively alter the genetics of an entire population. 

 

I realize it's fun to catch a huge mess of fish but sometimes it's beneficial to all of us to think of the future of the fishery, and only keep what's needed for one meal.

 

Illinois Bluegills Biology

Sunfish management: Minnesota DNR

http://myoutdoorsiowa.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-sex/

 

http://donjordanoutdoors.com/pages/110407griffyconserv.htm