Jeffrey D. Abney's Blog (30)

The month started on the Coastal Marsh with some solid fish on shallow cover.......

All of these ventures are on pole and line........I loved this technique as a kid and go back to it every year.......…

 Ran across a cool short story by writer James Prosek and his childhood dreams about bluegill fishing.......It caught my eye when he said he found bigbluegill.com while browsing one night while working in the museum in Raleigh......

Go to gardenandgun.com/article/bluegill-dreams for a cool short story.

Jeffrey

Closed out 2016 yesterday with a total of 5,921 sunfish for 2016 with six total species caught on the Albemarle. Here is the breakdown by species during another great year.....

Coming in at Number Six for the year is the REDBREAST Sunfish:  Not as abundant on the Albemarle as other species but still doing well in several locations..........I release the ones I catch here hoping they will increase in numbers because they are very fun to catch.…

Has anyone shopped at one of the Field and Stream Outdoor Stores?  How's their fishing department? Grand opening this weekend about an hour from me ...........Looks alot like Bass Pro...

As we close out what I consider to be peak on the Albemarle region of coastal North Carolina for Bluegill fishing, I wanted to take a glance back over the last three months and see how things went. Here's what I discovered for 2016:

 In May I fished 15 times for a total of 1,024 gills.........the largest creel was 120 and the lowest was 25........That worked out to an average bluegill creel of 68 for these fishing…

Assuming I still have a few minutes to fish an old reliable soft plastic or a new innovative jig......I have to have a place to document my results and catch it here first..........

Looking forward to a full season with Tripp's baits in tow......an incredible array of panfish splender.....follow it here on BBG.com in 2014........

I had tremendous success late last year after receiving some great baits from Dick......they are some incredible shrimp patterns in a wonderful collection of colors.......

James ties some beautiful bugs and I was stunned when I opened the box last month to see his baits in person.....He also ties some great jigs and we are both looking forward to see how things turn out........Find out here first......

From one Carolina to the next......we believe we are on to something here and I look forward to see what David's baits will do here in the other Carolina.......

No picture does his baits justice.......he has created them in all of my favorite colors and in several sizes as well......Throw in a Phyllis Diller or a Sunrise Spider and I think we're going to make some noise on the Albemarle this season.....

Allen has taken advantage of my personal love for jigs and has turned out some awesome baits for 2014.....I'm all stocked up and you can follow along here for the story of the "Mantis Jigs".........

I will follow the success of a great line of baits known affectionately as the "Silent Stingers".....New for 2014 are several refinements with the most significant for me being the creation of a # 6 bug........Will I ever be able to take off that Cotton Candy this year?........Fine out here first with testimony and great photos along the way......

This is where I will follow the 2014 results of some great bugs from Jim Gronaw's collection.....This is the third year that I will fish Jim's baits and it will be a challenge for other baits to top these proven baits such as the Gronaw Grass Shrimp and the Green Darner to name a couple.......

 Being a lifetime bluegill fisherman I often reflect on the past and what baits worked well in what type of conditions.....For many years, I would often just fish a plain hook with live bait or a plain ball jig tipped under a float and experienced great success in many different settings, whether that be the swamps and canals in southern Louisiana, farm ponds of friends and family, lakes and reservoirs throughout the south......I always had pretty good luck......I would occasionally pick up…

My mom is an identical twin and when my cousins and I would fish as kids we would always put our two best fish together fro Janice and Donice and we called it the "Daily Double".....That family tradition lives on here in some of the quality Daily Doubles taken in 2013......Those were the good ole days when the same dollar could by you both your favorite soda pop and candy bar.........…

January......Liked the dark shades in an otherwise light colored fish......

February....My mother was born in February and we shared the water on two nice trips in 2013 and she put it on us this day.......Great Fish Donice!…

Many things that happen in nature are very interesting and the color changes for the Black Crappie species is pretty cool. Down here on the tidal waters these fish go through three distinct color changes which are easy indications of the season. Just curious if the other members that catch a few crappie along the way see similar changes in their region......I've included a few pictures to support these facts......…

I decided on a recent trip that I would look back and reflect on a few of the memories of the 2013 season to date....If you have followed me at all on BBG you know that I traditionally count down to Good Friday as this usually marks the end of Winter and our water temperatures begin their slow crawl toward the 60s as we wait impatiently for our beloved Coppernose gills to become active..........Within 75 miles of my residence I have 12 river systems and over 50 creeks that regularly produce…

The sun has set on May 2013 but not until it went down in history as one of the best May's I've ever had.....traditionally I package my summer vacation every year around the Full moon in June and that is no different this year.......The quality of this year's gills has been better than this time last year.....actually it was 2008 the last time I saw this type of quality....I know Mount Rushmore only has four famous people on it but I couldn't narrow my favorite gills down that far from last…