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2014 TROPHY BLUEGILL QUEST

My Master Angler quest for a 10 inch plus northern strain gill in Michigan continues in 2014...

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Comment by jim cosgrove on November 6, 2014 at 2:07pm: hey tony skip the bait and just throw a popper on a 2wt flyrod over those beds.you'll never want to do anything else.i release ALL spawning gills as enough fools in my area keep them all.i didn't get to fish much during the 1st spawn but we had a good 2nd spawn and i caught 100s.30 or 40 before the popper was stripped of everything but the foam.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on November 6, 2014 at 12:41pm: I like Tonys thinking on the reel.
I'm a huge fan of the rigger actuated spin cast reel. Did I say huge? I meant H-U-G-E F-A-N!
Tonys logic is sound. Of all the ones I've tried, I gravitate towards the Daiwa X/USX series.

Comment by Tony Livingston on November 6, 2014 at 12:30pm: David, I look forward to reading about the results!

Comment by Tony Livingston on November 6, 2014 at 12:26pm: Ken if it were me, I would go with the underspin. Sooner or later he's probably gonna' end up with a spinning reel if he is at all intersted in fishing, and the underspin presents itself as being closer in design than a spincast

Comment by Slip Sinker on November 6, 2014 at 11:59am: hey while i got you guys here ... im shopping for my five year old grandson underspin or regular spincast. i had both models in my hand today. daiwa underspin felt nice to ... whats your opinions?

my 3.5 year old will not give up his spinning gear i gave him ... so hes all set. lol

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on November 6, 2014 at 11:53am: To draw a close to this thread hijack, I will rig the 202 as we've discussed and add it to my rod tote.
It'll get used and I'll see if I feel poorly equipped.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on November 6, 2014 at 11:51am: I wouldn't want a 202 come winter!

I no longer have the privilege of fishing tidy ponds. I've had to move to a very big lake. It's definitely been an adjustment. One of those changes is away from the little micro fiddlies I've grown accustomed to. The blue gill here are in deeper water and there isn't a lot of the traditional cover we associate with them.

I've found my teeny tackle to be a hindrance more than a help. In my case, 4# test is about the practical limit. Casting miles down the way isn't often needed, either, and a long, soft rod manages to get baits where I need them. The last big sunfish I caught were about ten yards away on a rock bank.
A 202 with 4# test would have done the job - I was using a Daiwa trigger spin then, in fact, with 6# crappie line.

For me, it's the location that dictates the tackle. This is similar to what Jeff Abney faces. As often as not, the fish are straight down, anyway. The best gills I've caught here were on the bottom in 18' of water, on a worm and massive #8 hook. Ditto for the shellcrackers. The ability to fling a microscopic tidbit has taken a second seat. I'm a little disappointed at this, and I've been forced to upsize because of it. But my two most used pannie reels are, you guessed it - spin casters.

I value them for their ease of one handed use on my waters. For 1/100 jigs and little bitsy-bits, I have UL spinning stuff.

Comment by Tony Livingston on November 6, 2014 at 11:40am: I started out fishing long rods through the ice. It works, but I'll bet a 202 would test a person's intestinal fortitude.......

Comment by Tony Livingston on November 6, 2014 at 11:27am: As I began to get serious with my BG fishing many years ago, I wanted to try all the techniques and methodologies I was reading about in the fishing magazines. That's when the 202's shortcomings began to hamper my efforts. Take a 202 with 4lb line, tie on a #6 gold hook, and add a 2" garden worm....no crawlers... and fish it with no weight or float of any kind. Just your bait for casting material. How far can you cast?

Now remove the hook and replace it with a size 8 popper...add a beemoth to the popper's hook to give it a little more weight.. (this is my all time favorite setup for spawning BG's)... Now how far can you cast? Far enough to be able to stand 20-25' down the bank, away from the nesting colony to avoid spooking them while you drop the popper in their midst? My 202's just weren't up to the task. There's just far less friction when line comes off the spool on a spinning reel vs. a closed face. This realization sounded the death knell for closed faced reels for me.

I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with closed face gear, only that it does have its limitations. In my experience, Bluegills, big bluegills especially, are never taken with the same methodology year-round. And some of these methods may require a level of finesse that is difficult to achieve when using closed face reels.

If someone challenged me to try and catch bluegills 12 months out of the year, using only a 202, could I do it? Probably, but the numbers and caliber of fish I caught might not be what I would prefer to see. In warmer climates, or in situations where the fish were unpressured and unwary, I think things might be a little different.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on November 6, 2014 at 9:59am: The 202 delicate? No, it is not that.
But fill it with fresh 4# test and mount it on a 7' spin fly rod and you'll cover most delicate jobs where I fish.
Anything smaller is rightly specialist territory, anyway, the micro world if you will.

Heck, I'd stake a temperate season on only 202's, as long as I could pick my line/leader and rod combinations. Hmmm, might make an interesting experiment.