Fall Gills

[Bruce Tomaselli]

Do gills congregate near shore in the Fall prior to retreating to their deep Winter haunts? Maybe to fatten up for the long Winter?

[Slip Sinker]

ive been following the fish in healthy weeds through out the seasons.

with the warm winter and thin ice on our lakes last year we found the fish in 9-0 ' or less through out the ice fishing season. green weed beds were key.

[Tinknocker1]

i have seen some pretty good fall bites close to shore here in Ohio on sunny day's even in some colder days im talking on public  lakes not somebody's tame ponds.........

[Slip Sinker]

i looked over my database and found some catches close to ice-in late fall or early winter. typically i have used slip/float/waxie or crawler bits and left the jigging poles at home. this year is going to be different

[Bruce Tomaselli]

Yes, I'm not talking private ponds, either. I'm talking public lakes.

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

In my area they do Bruce........take today........water temps in the mid 70s...........fish stacked back in as shallow as two feet........we fished the shore line in a basin that holds a tremendous amount of deep winter fish...............

[Slip Sinker]

We noticed an unusual pattern a couple trips ago as surf temps dipped into the upper 60’s… many fish moving up and down in the water column along the deep drop-off in 25-0’ FOW . Dropping a vertical jig presentation in front of them produced many good b.gills when we expected them to be b.crappie… 3 yr old Connor was tagging them with a slip float set at 2-0’ over the deep basin…the b.crappie ended up on the mud flats in 6-0 ft of water. A kinda flip-flop what we expected for the day.

[Bruce Tomaselli]

Up until last year I hadn't been serious about pan fish for about 20 years. I remember that we caught the largest gills and crappie in the Spring and Fall, if I remember correctly. We fished from shore. We always fished a rubber jig tipped with wax or meal worms.