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May starts out just a little bit cool for Bluegills and ends just right.
That means that in the beginning, you'll find 'Gills of all sizes cruising
the warming shallows and hunting everything to break their winter fast.
But by the end of the month, shallow water is warm enough (65 degrees) for
a few weeds to have come up and for the spawn to have begun. The fish are
active, hungry and competitive.
Bluegills, with their big blue gill rakers are trophy sunfish. The biggest
live in the deepest waters, sometimes twenty feet down or more in the summer.
Pumkinseeds also swim our waters. These are the ones that have the rainbow
mix of orange/yellow/cream, bands and spots. They are the smallest and are
often most of the small fish catch.
One more note, the most colorful and bigger of any type sunfish are the
dominant males. The more muted, the females. In Bluegills, the male's belly
is orange/copper, the female's more yellow. And the one inbetween and smaller
is a non-dominant male, less territorial but just as common.
Remember how catching Bluegills was just a lot of fun? And catching amounted
to presenting almost anything that they could get into their smallish mouths.
This is probably the first fish most of us ever caught. It is also, probably,
the fish we have caught the most. This makes the "little" Bluegill,
if you think about it, one of our most valuable resources.
Considering the Bluegill's essential roll in freshwater ecology and their
value to us the fisher, it's a happy circumstance that we can ignore them
and they just keep on breeding and surviving.
There are threats to Bluegill populations though. Overpopulation and stunting
occurs when man or nature makes major changes to the system. Take out too
many of the bigger fish: Basses, Pike and in some places Bluegills themselves
and too many smaller Bluegills survive, stunting the whole population.
This is happening in the most popular Cape Bass Ponds right now. In these
places you now see mostly small Bluegills. The solution is to take out fewer
of the big fish or make an effort to remove, and here is the fun part, ten
pounds of sunfish for every pound of Bass.
Another threat to Bluegills is a lack of sun. Bluegills are called sunfish
because they require sunlit ecosystem to survive. Infestations of Hydrilla
and Eurasian Millfoil can over-carpet even large impoundments, blocking
the sun. This forces Bluegills into ever smaller spaces of semi-open water
and kills off the over dense population.
My sources in the Division tell me Eur-Asian Millfoil is on the Cape. That
means that the only way to keep it from spreading is vigilance on our part.
These plants are spread from small fragments attached to the boat, trailer,
bait bucket, etc. Be sure to wash or dry out your equipment between ponds.
A little story. I have fished Leverett Pond, in western Mass. for twenty
five years. It's a little 25 acre Bass pond, very lightly fished. It is
now almost 90% covered by the millfoil that was accidentally introduced
a dozen years ago. For a while, the town hired a special "chopper"
to cut a 100 yard long and five foot wide channel from the public launching
site to open water. The pond is virtually unusable now. Lets not let this
happen here.
The final threat to trophy bluegulls is our own success. Big 'Gills can
take up to ten years to reach their size. If we take too many big, 1/2 pound
or better, bluegills we can permanently alter the size ratios of a pond.
Better to keep the mid-sized fish for our meal and let the big Bulls live
on.
Catchin' these fish is still as easy as bein' a kid. Well, almost. Next
to bait, which I'll get to in a bit, the best tactic for early Bluegills
has to be flyfishing. The combination of a surface presentation, variable
retrieves and small sizes make this approach a real skillet filler.
Start by working the coves and protected windward* shorelines early in the
month. An area of shallow water warming in the sun and unruffled by the
wind is just right for the delicate work of teasing up a mess of sunfish.
Choose a little popper (or #10 muddler minnow, #12 yellow humpy, if you'd
rather) and lay it out ahead of you onto about three feet of water. Wading
the shoreline works well where there's room to cast.
This is the best time of year to find saucer size Bluegills up in shallow
water. By the end of June, they've gone back to 10' to 20' of depth. For
the pre-spawn they're right up in the warmest water in the pond where we
can walk to 'em.
Start slow, just land the fly and twitch it once. Wait. In less than ten
seconds something should jump it. The longer the wait, often the bigger
the fish making an approach. Other fish hang back when they see the big
ones moving in for the kill.
Be patient until you discover just how long they are taking to bite. Some
days it's just a couple of seconds, others it's a half minute.
If you don't have a hit in a half minute, make three short strips. Wait.
The fly has travelled only a foot but you can be sure it has the attention
of everything within five feet of it underwater.
Still no hit? Then try the slightest twitch of your fly by wiggling the
rod tip horizontally. Take up the slack line and wiggle it some more. Still
nothing? Then roll cast to another spot and start teasing all over again.
When I was a kid, my rule for keepers was that they had to be big enough
so my fingers would be an inch apart when I held around 'em. Now, I want
to see two inches between my finger tips to start thinking of panfish fillets
back home.
Cape Cod Bluegills can get very* big. I've seen a lot of 3/4 pounders and
have to believe that bigger fish are hiding in the depths. I'm talking about
a Bluegill the size of a 45 rpm record. Think about it. Spring is definitely
the time to catch bigger fish, shallower.
Once in a while, they stop jumping surface patterns. (And by jumping, I
mean literally jumping up out of the water and then down onto the "fly"
to pin it against the surface tension.) This is the time to switch to underwater
and the Cape Cod fly. Wooley Bugger.
The WB, in brown with yellow/ orange highlights and a bit of flashabou,
is darned effective. You'll have a hard time keeping it away from the Perch,
Pickeral and the Bass too.
The way to target the Bluegills is to cast away from cover to more open
water. Sunfish avoid the hunters hiding in cover so casting to clean bottom
or further from shore will catch you more sunnies and fewer of those undesirable
Largemouths and waterwolves.
Toss out your Wooly Bugger, #8 to #12, on a short cast and work it in the
top half of the water column. Make 'em come up and hit it from below. Short,
constant, 6" pumping retrieves are most effective.
The strike will be a slash and run as the fish turns broadside to you. Then
you'll feel that vibration that only fighting sunfish send up the line as
they speed up their tail strokes to get away. Truely a game fish.
Flatten your barbs for gentler unhooking and because sunfish never(!) jump.
Spinning for Bluegills and their brethren means the smallest spinners, tiny
plugs and jigs on ultralight tackle. With spinners and plugs, choose 1/24
of an ounce or about an inch long for best results.
Fish the surface with the floating minnow plug. Pop it, then slow swim it.
Alternately, swim it under with a nice slow wriggling retrieve (and the
occasional stop-float to the surface).
Spinners have to be kept moving but work best on Bluegills fished high in
the water column. This is definitely the opposite of fishing low for Bass
and Pickeral. Cast and engage your reel before the spinner hits the water
to start retrieving immediately.
There doesn't appear to be a "white/silver" rule in spinner colors
for Bluegills like Bass and Trout. Go darker with black, green and red instead.
And now the winners are . . . a jig or a small rubber worm.
Remember all those gentle tugging strikes that you could never set the hook
on when working a worm for Bass in the pads? Sunfish. They inhale the worm
from the tail so they never get hooked by your texas or carolina rig. It's
their usual manner of eating, given their small mouths. The answer is a
small lure with the hook at the end.
The worm rigging method for sunfish requires buying a few of those 4"
"mini" Bass worms. Tie on about a #8 short shank thin wire hook
right to the end of your line. Push the hook point in through the nose of
the worm and out the side at an angle. Then pull the hook down to the end
of the worm and hook through from the side at an angle and out through the
end. The throat and point should be exposed behind the worm. The eye and
some of the shank remain inside the end of the worm. Leave enough slack
line between tip and end to allow the worm to flex.
On the water, cast to the shore line slope where the depth drops from 3'
to 6'. Twitch-retrieve your worm just fast enough to suspend it off the
bottom. (This is the reason for the small hook and no weight.) Now when
those slab sided brutes sneak up behind your wriggler and inhale it like
a six year old with a piece of spaghetti, ya got 'em!
This system works well in all waters at all times of year but really shines
before the weeds grow enough to foul the hook. Like, say, May.
The other under-used but very effective approach is jigging. Again, you
have to go light. So think about an ultra light rig that can cast 1/24 to
1/64 oz. jigs. The essentials here are a long rod and thin line. If you
don't have a special rig for this you can improvise one of two ways and
do just as well as the next guy.
Plan "A". Put your open face spinning reel with the 2 lb. test
line on it on a 4-7 wt. fly rod. The fly rod is longer and has the light
action necessary to cast a light jig. The length also helps to control your
retrieve and makes catching a bit more sporting. It may look funny but it
works well and that's what counts.
Plan "B". Use your current spinning rig with the 6 lb. test on
it and attach the jig with a dropper line to a heavier casting lure (taking
another page from the flyfishing book) or a float.
Using one of the new "floating" jigs, you attach it with a short
6" leader about a foot in front of a diving plug to make it look like
the plug is chasing the jig. This presentation can be devastating to the
fish watching it go by, who try to outrun your plug to the tiny "minnow"
(jig). You'll also get some savage strikes from Bass and Pickeral attacking
your "pre-occupied" plug.
Alternately, you can tie a two foot dropper from a small leadhead marabou
or tube jig onto the tail hook of a plug or behind an in-line spinner and
get strikes from fish attracted by the bigger lure and hitting the smaller.
Finally, try adding a pencil bobber and slowly swim your jig back under
the float. This allows for very slow and controlled retrieves. Just what
you want.
All these spinning methods work well enough most of the time when the fish
are willing. When they're not, improvisation is often the key to successful
catching. Keep a few small jigs snelled up on light lines in a film can
in your box for the tougher times. A jig can save a day when the fish just
don't seem to be out there. Save it for you and thrill your kids.
Bait? Small worms. Small hooks (#8 or less). No barbs. Pencil bobber. Half
deep. Light line. Light rod. Big bucket. Happy kid. 'Nough said.
If you are planning a kids' trip for Bluegills, the simplest and most enjoyable
experience for them might be with a cane pole. No reel to turn. No casting
or line holding to master. (No daddy afraid his rod is going to be dropped
overboard.)
You can buy cane poles, make one out of a light rod blank or watch the side
of the road for an ornamental bamboo planting (and ask permission to cut
a couple). The line should be the length of the pole and the rest is as
usual. Cane poling makes the fishing easier for the kids and the Bluegills,
well, they just keep biting.
If you are after trophy bull Bluegills, May is when they breakfast in
the shallows. After the spawn, the bulls will move back to the security
of the depths (where almost nothing beats a whole nightcrawler in July!)
You can wear yourself out this time of year, catchin'-releasing-and catchin'
some more. Nice work this. And if we take a little care, it'll be there
forever.
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