Bluegill Fishing

[Crappie Fisherman]

Well, we had an awesome week fishing at Table Rock. We cleaned well over 150 bluegill ranging from 7 1/2 to 9 1/2 inches. They were all caught in 18-20 feet of water on the gravel points and gravel flats around the dam and Indian Point areas. We were using nightcrawlers fishing on the bottom just drifting and trolling in the 18-20 foot range. We also caught several spotted and smallmouth bass on ultralights. What a blast! One spotted bass was 3 pounds. We released the bass but had a great fish fry with the bluegill. Good to know the big ones are still in there. For whatever reason, the fishing was really good the first part of last week and the last part of the week was slow. Probably due to the cold front and rain that came in on Wednesday? I would have figured it would have stabilized by the end of the week, but it was still slow. Most of the gills were big males with lots of color. A few females had eggs that looked like they were spawing. Have the bluegill spawned this late and that deep in the lake in years past?