BSL Tucker Hollow 7/167/16

[Ham]

Haunted by Bill Babbler's tale of big Bluegill offshore with a Yellow Perch thrown in I found myself dragging the Bass Cat to Tucker Hollow this morning. It was cool(ish) early and not crowded, but the one other guy there managed to make a two lane ramp and one at a time deal. SMH. Cost me a few minutes, but NBD.

water temp was 82.9 before 7 am. Water had 5 foot visibility. Partly cloudy with a little breeze out of the W/SW. 

There is a topwater bite. I had some nice chunky LMB on a Super Spook Jr. I caught some smaller LMB schooling out over 80 FOW. Lots of schools of them playing that game, but most groups were low numbers of fish that seemed late for a party. They would come up and feed, but be gone before you could get there to screw with them. One group was quite a bit larger and stayed up long enough for me to get a cast in. I also got one on a 3 inch swim bait after the school was sub surface. The schooling fish I caught were 10 inches or so.

About 0930 I started looking for the bluegill. The ones I found were in 18-25 FOW on deep flats near the channel drop off. I was in the Horseshoe Bend area. There are lots of them to throw at. Lots of water fits the bill and the fish are scattered roaming it. I had some nice ones and I had some small ones. I spent a lot of time trying to make them eat fake stuff, but they eat natural baits better. Sadly, it wasn't even close. I always want to try other stuff, but my numbers would have been better with a drop shot an red worms full time. No yellow perch for me. 

I quit fishing about 1 PM. The ramp was a disaster for such a small number of boats coming and going. A couple of well intentioned mom's were watching there kids swim on the boat ramp. I just shook my head. I'm going to guess they would give me crap for having my boat in the swimming area, but seem to have no clue what they were doing wasn't a great idea. 

Ended up catching a bunch of panfish and more bass than I expected. I brought one deep hooked bluegill home for my cat. Other fished were released. 

 

[Quillback]

Saturday summer time boat ramps, I have come to expect that if I go out on a Saturday there will be someone that will throw a monkey wrench in the works. 

I like your plan of attack, I have been meaning to do that myself, fish for bass early, then break out the redworms.  Only difference is I would bring home about 10 of those gills.

[Ham]

I also tried a small spoon tipped with Gulp (they can pick the gulp off w/o getting hooked),  a small jiggin Rap, a BG Baby Shad ( hung one of my biggest ones), Spy Bait (has caught big gills before), a small swim bait, and other various sinker hook rigging styles. 

The "problem" is that there is a lot of area for them to scatter out in. They will gobble the worms but it's tough to cover much ground. I tried the various horizontal presentations hope to pick off large aggressive fish and up my chances for a Yellow Perch. 

It looked like a lot of the blue gill were 5 foot off bottom. I saw the same digital signature on bluffy / 45 degree banks too so maybe you could drop shot there as well. 

I can see where bottom bouncing puts your bait down in Gill Central a lot. 

 

[grizwilson]

51 minutes ago, Ham said:

I also tried a small spoon tipped with Gulp (they can pick the gulp off w/o getting hooked),  a small jiggin Rap, a BG Baby Shad ( hung one of my biggest ones), Spy Bait (has caught big gills before), a small swim bait, and other various sinker hook rigging styles. 

The "problem" is that there is a lot of area for them to scatter out in. They will gobble the worms but it's tough to cover much ground. I tried the various horizontal presentations hope to pick off large aggressive fish and up my chances for a Yellow Perch. 

It looked like a lot of the blue gill were 5 foot off bottom. I saw the same digital signature on bluffy / 45 degree banks too so maybe you could drop shot there as well. 

I can see where bottom bouncing puts your bait down in Gill Central a lot. 

 

A bottom bouncer with a worm harness is very effective for Gill on Stockton, with a walleye every once in a while.  I am wanting to come try it at Tucker, just hot, and summer time weekends my patience is too weak.

[Quillback]

Those bluff/rocky/steep banks could hold redear, maybe that is what you were seeing on those types of banks. 

[Ham]

I guess they could be most anything. I need to catch some and find out. 

[dan hufferd]

Yep, the bottom bouncer will catch the fire out of gills, On table rock in October we were catching them in 35 feet of water on the bouncer. We put 12 fatties in the boat before moving to a better walleye spot.