Thread: Dog Day Panfish

It should be in our "Articles" area of crappie.com.

I almost missed it. One does not see too many articles concerning the summer habits of panfish.

Thanks for takin' the time and effort to author such a great article.

aj

Great article. Thanks for sharing. That fish will eat real good with some hot sauce on it.

Good to hear from you Jeff. Thought you dropped off the face of the earth. Hope you're doing well.

Summer patterns oftentimes through anglers in a tissy, but it doesn't have to be that way. You need to quit "looking" for structure, and you need to start "visualizing" structure. What I mean is, we are accustomed to fishing structure we can see... emergent vegetation, reeds, brush, emergent wood, etc... instead we need to fish what's below the surface and pretend we'll looking through an underwater camera.

The spring frenzy spoils us, and we continue to fish those patterns. Now we need to look outside the box in order to have that same success...

Here's a big summertime gill...



Measured in right around that 11.5-inch mark. Came off a deep rock pile and fell victom to a 2-inch Mister Twister Mino.

Wow! nice gill there Matt! I'll have to take a day off and read the entire article. You take great pictures. Mike

Nope....did'nt fall off the face of the earth....just trying to go "low key".Don't know what I wanna do as far as the fishing career goes....think I may just stay low key for awhile longer.Kind of enjoying it to tell you the truth...although....people keep calling kinda concerned.All is well.

Good article Matt, thats for taking the time to write it out.

what would be some good places to find them if "your lake has no weeds"?
thanks

I would look towards deep rock in the summer months too... or expansive sticky-bottom flats... both of these areas will hold fish. Main basin areas where it flattens out between deep holes and shallow structure. Big sunfish will actually school up and roam those areas. Same holds true for winter sunfish under the ice. Deep water is often overlooked by most anglers when thinking about sunfish, but it should be one of the first places you look somedays

If you have shallow woody areas you can look towards those spots the same as we do weeds. Wood provides cover and comfort... as do weeds. Wood provides forage and nutrients... as do weeds. Wood also oftentimes brings with it an abundance of life (secondary ecosystem)... as do weeds. So, wood in my opinion, can also be seen as the alternative to weeds...

What type of structure do you have in your body of water? And what sort of depths? Any current?

OK....I quit fishing for bream in shallow water using a cork several years ago. I do not even fish for blue gill that way anymore. I have learned that those bream beds that you see in shallow water near the banks have smaller fish on them than what is out deeper. Wherever you see a bream bed like that....back out further from the bank as there may be anywhere from two or three to more beds than that kinda stairstepped down the hill so anchor your boat where you can throw to those places. Another good place is to use your fish finder and find a ledge or a shelf where the water is say 6-8 ft. deep on one side and falls off deep on the other side say to 15-20 ft. anchor the boat on the shallow side and throw to the deep side. For rigging this is what I use, a good five and a half foot light action rod and a small spinning reel loaded with 6 lb. Mr. Crappie high vis yellow line. I first slide a quarter oz. egg sinker on my line followed by a bead and a rubber bobber/sinker stop , then 2-3 ft. below the bead and sinker stop I use a number 4 long shank cricket hook. Bait of choice is redworms or meal worms. Cast your rig out and reel in almost all of the slack...leave just a little. We fish with two rods apiece. Place your rods in rod holders and when you see the slack in your line start to tighten up get ready to set the hook. Some days all I catch is red ear , other days I will catch both red ear and blue gill as they seem to sometimes bed together or hang out in the same places. I catch them all year long using this method. The neat thing about using the egg sinker as a slip sinker this way is that with just a little slack in your line the fish never feel the sinker when they pick up the bait untill its too late. Catching really large bream on light tackle can really be addicting so watch out.