Bluegill Overpopulation

[miland black]

Last year we fished at my friends pond it always had decent 7 inch gills in it with a few bigger, nobody had fished it for a few years and all the gills were a small 4-5 inches, and every cast  yielded one, so we cleaned out about 150 or so putting them in the small stream running a few feet from his pond. Also we added about 30, 20-25 inch Catfish to his pond, I took my cousin and his son fishing there yesterday and we caught 7inch gills along with a couple 8 inchers and 3 nice cats, and a few Largemouths 12 inchers.

[Bruce Tomaselli]

It seems like thinning them out sure helped. I guess not as much competition for food. There is a great discussion about this on the forum page.

[miland black]

yes and the catfish may have helped a little too, because they are big enough to eat the small gills.... we didn't have any knowledge on this, just decided to try it, and it seems to have worked.

[Slip Sinker]

after fishing for many years i have just recently become acquainted to just how complex a species the b.gill are... amazing. i believe Bruce is referring to one of the discussions here on the forum...

http://bigbluegill.com/forum/topics/why-everything-you-know-about-b...

[miland black]

Thanks I read this article, and think that not fishing the beds so hard is a good idea... but went to another pond that used be a real good Blue Gill spot and the guy moved away, the new owner watched it like a hawk keeping all fisherman out, so after ten years or longer I told my son we had to do a night sneak in,  to see what it was like well we caught a fish every cast but they were all 5-6 inchers, years ago this was a 8 inch gill spot, lack of fishing seemed to ruin this spot too! it also had huge Bass and we didn't get any Bass.