HELP!!! Need Help Estimating Length

[John Furnier]

Here's a fish story (but true_...when I was in college, I caught a blugill in an old, WV farm pond. It was so large that it did not even look real. I was going to mount it, but was broke, so the farmer's wife decided to eat it. Before cleaning it, I asked her to take a picture. To demonstrate how big the fish was, I fanned out my hand as big as possible, laid it across the side, and the fish was significantly larger than the span of my hand. In other words, based on my 9" span, the dimension from belly to back was easily 10". This did not include the fin.

Does anyone know how to guess how long this fish might have been? It was spring and fatter than a hog. I want to get a replica made, but I am interested in some sort of formula to estimate length. Not sure if the aspect ratio of a bluegill is predictable - like the length equals height or some other crazy formula. In my case...the "height" was 10",,,what can I multiply this number by to get the length.

I would love some advice.

[John Furnier]

Oh...one more thing. Never trust a 60 year old lady with early stages of alzheimers to load the film correctly and actually take a picture. (Instead of the fish getting away...the picture did.)

[John Furnier]

OK...I've learned a few things over the past few days browsing pictures on the web. 1) Really big bluegills look almost square. The fish I caught looked squarish too, though not as freakish as some of the record size fish. 2) Measuring the length and height of numerous photos of "typical" gills, "big" gills and "record" gills, I found the the length to height ratio varied from 1.2 to 1.8. 3) Using the estimate aspect ratio from the photos, the bluegill I caught would likely be in the foot long range, which sketched on paper looks remotely familiar to what I remember.

Now the next challenge...seeing if any of the taxidermists who do reproductions can duplicate the fish.

[Bruce Condello]

Cecil Baird, who is on this website is a bluegill master. I know for a fact that he is also well versed in creating reproductions. I'm not afraid to put in a little plug for him because he mounted two of my bluegill as well. He's extremely good. If your bluegill was a foot long, and in great body condition he may have made the mystical two-pound mark! Congratulations! That's a great, great fish. I'm about to post some photos of a two pound, four ounce monster that was caught in Nebraska and it was actually a little less than a foot long. Your fish could have certainly been over two pounds.

[Robert Boland]

There are formulas for bass (I found them online) I use, so I would think they have them for just about any species. I know the bass formula is extremely accurate, having tested it.
Of course the bigger the fish, the more accurate you get.