Bluegill

[JohnF52]

What is the biggest bluegill you have seen from Beaver?  Biggest I have seen is about a pound.

[Blll]

I caught some type of hybrid, big mouth (green sunfish) with a saucer shape (bluegill) that was just at 1#. Really pulled drag. Largest true gil' was about 9"so about 1/2#  Noticed many more gils this year over last year. High water may produce even more. Any one target them?

[Stump bumper]

My wife caught a sunfish, not a true blue gill that went almost 3lbs years ago while we were fishing a bass tournament. It was the biggest fish we caught that day. I think the spots and catfish keep the bluegill population in check and keep them from getting very big. When I do catch a big gill it is usually on a spoon fishing a deep brush pile. My biggest shad on Beaver is bigger than my biggest bluegill and stripers love gizzard shad so go figure.

[JohnF52]

9 hours ago, Stump bumper said:

My wife caught a sunfish, not a true blue gill that went almost 3lbs years ago while we were fishing a bass tournament. It was the biggest fish we caught that day. I think the spots and catfish keep the bluegill population in check and keep them from getting very big. When I do catch a big gill it is usually on a spoon fishing a deep brush pile. My biggest shad on Beaver is bigger than my biggest bluegill and stripers love gizzard shad so go figure.

Keeping the population in check allows the survivors to become larger due to less competition for food.  If the above is true the bluegill should be relatively large. I think they are overpopulated in Beaver.

[Stump bumper]

John you could be right, maybe it is all the shad the big fish can get so much easier that keep the gills overpopulated. There is also a very hard bottom and most places I have seen really good gills have had muddy bottoms. 

But I honestly think the lack of cover make the gills easy picking for bigger fish and any lake I have fished that has grass has bigger bluegill, could be the food source in that grass. 

Any way I would love to hear from someone who has done a study, I am just guessing.

[Dan the fisherman]

I've caught a few big gills. A few years ago that is. Got them on a DT20 on a point durning fall. 

[Guest]

I keep finding big schools or bream & crappie around the bluff cuts. I would be drop shotting them like a video game, but the wind blows hard every time I go out.

BTW, I read an outdoors article in 2004 that talked about a dock owner that wore out the big gills. He caught one that made the paper. He said "its the size of a personal pan pizza" LOL! thats a big gill right there..

[Ham]

Bull Shoals doesn't seem to have a lot of Bluegills, but the ones I catch are large. I assume that it is a lack of habitat that favors bluegill. Lots of Lomgear Sunfish and in some areas Green Sunfish, but I've never found areas that have lots of bluegills.

[Quillback]

Every year I say to myself that I am going to do some serious bluegill fishing, but I never do.  There's probably some good redears in Beaver.

[Notropis]

Good discussion going on here on a fish species that is often overlooked.  Beaver is not as good a bluegill lake as the smaller lakes in this area but there are some good "bream" to be caught if you get away from the bank and try out the brush piles in deeper water.  I've targeted them before many times when I wanted some eating fish and done pretty well, late summer through mid-fall. 

You guys are pretty good amateur biologists!  Fish populations are density dependent, generally speaking the higher the numbers of fish the smaller the average size.  The best trophy fishing is typically found in fish populations with low density and less competition for forage.

Beaver is not a great bream fishery because of several factors.  Bluegill are primarily insect eaters, either aquatic (nymphs and naiads) or terrestrial (grasshoppers etc.)  Beaver is not blessed with a lot of aquatic insects because of lack of shallow habitat (except in high water years) and large areas of the lake are too deep.  Some studies have shown that lakes with a lot of threadfin shad usually don't have good bluegill populations, something to do with competition between the fish larva for zooplankton.  The lack of shoreline cover for the fish, during normal water levels, is also a factor.

I think the bigger bluegill in Beaver, learn to eat larva shad and other small fish as well as the aquatic insects near deep brush piles.  I've caught some pretty big ones mixed in with schools of small white bass that were chasing small shad near the surface and some good ones trolling with small crankbaits near deep brushpiles.