Thread: Deep water spawning

Has anyone experienced shellcracker or bream spawning in deep water? I limited out over some logs in thirty feet of water. All the males were pissing and the females had thick bloodred eggsacks.

Nope. I've only seen shallow beds of about 3 feet or less for bream of all kinds and Speck beds at about 6 to 8 feet deep. Spawning is another matter.

i've caught bluegill and punkinseed 20-22 ft deep on philpott res. using bottom bouncers and crawlers for walleye. and they were pissin and full of eggs. this is a deep clear mountain res. these are the biggest ones i've caught out of this lake...10' punkin seeds??? beautiful fish!

I fish a clear water strip mine and it runs 16 to 18'. The largest gills always spawn in the deepest areas. Smaller ones use the shallows.
There is a fair amount of pressure there though.Mike

You betcha. I never fish shallow for gills anymore. The water is becoming too clear because of the zebra mussles and the bigger ones spawn anywhere from 11 to 20 feet.
If you want kids to have fun and catch a lot of fish, go shallow. But for bigger ones go deep.

I always find the shellcrackers in deeper water usually about 8-10'.But the bluegills I always fish the shallow backwaters , if one has small fish mostly I move to the next hole.I will back up off beds to say 5' deep to try and find bigger gills but I like sight fishing for them.

I have seen big gills spawning in very deep crystal clear water while scuba diving. The water clarity was so good I could see over 100ft around me. I could see the bottom in 40ft of water.

Cilurian Springs is a old rock quarry. We would drive down to Dawson Springs KY to scuba dive for the day. This was before they cleaned up Cilurian Springs and it was still used as a dump. I can remember seeing big huge bluegills (Bream) spawning in 20ft + deep water. There was an old haul road that went down into the bottom of the quarry and this road was flooded. But it sloped at around 30deg to get the equipment in and out of the quarry. The gills found this submerged road bed ideal for spawning. This had to be after school was out. So I think it was in the first part of June that I found the gills spawning.

http://www.brainmist.com/dive/cs_gfx/cs08.htm

http://www.divecerulean.com/

http://www.dtmag.com/dive-usa/DiveCerulean.html

I am just like Illinoisgiller I fish strip pits and catch my best fish in 20 feet + water. No one thinks to fish it like that so I try and keep it a secret at the location that I fish.

Like Giller said, I've also seen situations in clear strip mines and also in clear farm ponds that have some spots of 20+ ft of water where the gills were spawning in 10+ ft of water. It's a little rare in the farm ponds but it does happen. The fun thing about the strip mines is that you can get them out of 10-15 ft of water to come up on dry flies and buddy that's what its all about. Two years ago, I had them actually coming out of the water to hit them. I have never seen large blugill come completely out of the water to hit something. Its usually the old pop or boil. It was a day I'll never forget. Had to let water out of a five gallon bucket to get more fish in it within two hours!

Originally Posted by stumpbumpers

Has anyone experienced shellcracker or bream spawning in deep water? I limited out over some logs in thirty feet of water. All the males were pissing and the females had thick bloodred eggsacks.

Bluegill typically spawn in 1-5' depths, redear a little deeper with the largest sunfish spawning earlier and deeper. In very clear impoundments, sunfish will build nests in deeper water, sometimes as deep as 10-12' deep if light and temperature is conducive to spawning. Depths beyond this don't typically have enough light and or temperature for fish to spawn (at least 67 degrees)

Sunfish, like bass, pre-spawn in great numbers in deep water staging areas near spawning sites waiting for proper tempertures to move shallow. Many fisherman catch these pre-spawners in deep water and assume there spawning because of egg or milt extrusion after the catch, but this is simply not the case.

For a succesful spawn, fish need light and temperature, typical of shallow water, not deep water. Dave (Fisheries Manager).