Thread: Bluegill Conservation

I agree completely, while I do love to eat them, I only keep a few for the freezer each time I go. I know I cant control what everyone else does, but I can control what I do. I also dont say anything if you want to keep a bunch because you paid the same for a license that I did

I can't argue with you about the fisheries studies since I am not familiar with them. However, I am very familiar with waters that seem to contain far too many small bluegill, and too a lesser extent some like that with crappie and bass.

It used to be that stunting of fish was blamed on over population and a resultant lack of forage. Are you saying that the new studies are showing that instead of over population that this is now thought to be some sort of genetic response to excessive predatory pressure? If so, it seems to suggest that bluegill have different responses than other panfish such as crappie and bass, which when left alone after being over harvested seem to recover very nicely in both numbers and size.

Biologists in Illinois discovered that there are two distinct subsets of male bluegill within any bluegill population: those that mature sexually at a larger size, which could be anywhere from 7" in a public lake to 9" or better in an intensively-managed private pond, and display all the classic traits of mature males such as dark colors, a large opercular tab, black tipping on the scales, a hump on the forehead, etc.; and what the biologists named "sneaker" males, which mature sexually at three or four inches and have none of the distinguishing traits of a male bluegill. They observed that a sneaker male will approach a nest being guarded by a mature male, and because it looks like a female, the mature male thinks the sneaker is a female, and lets it onto the nest; the sneaker then fertilizes the eggs, and the genetics of the bluegill in that lake just declined a little.

However, if there are lots of mature males within a population, the sneakers have less success spawning than if there are few to no mature males; and of course, if there are lots of mature males, they're fertilizing eggs too, and they're going to get first choice of the true females. But if the mature males are removed in large numbers, the sneakers get free reign.

Stunting can and will occur when bluegill overpopulate; but what biologists have discovered in the past twelve years is that stunting is not the most common cause of small bluegill in a public lake - the most common cause is overharvest. I personally have seen this happen several times just on public lakes within a half hour of my hometown; most recently, it happened four years ago on a 50-acre lake managed by TWRA. The lake had never had bluegill to amount to anything, but five summers ago I caught a couple bluegill that were not large, but were unusually healthy for what I had seen from that lake; I made a mental note to come back there the following spring. Sure enough, the following spring I had three trips on which I caught fifteen to twenty bluegill from a half pound to a pound or better each time. The people who run the concession on the lake used to have a fishing report page on their website; for March that year the comment about bluegill was that they couldn't believe how many big bluegill were being caught. Two months later, the fishing report said that they didn't know what had happened to the bluegill that year, that no one was catching any. Two months - that's how long it took for the meathogs to destroy a burgeoning trophy bluegill fishery. The same thing happened to another lake, this one forty acres, and also managed by TWRA, about twenty-five years ago; the lake was re-stocked from scratch after dam repairs, and four years later had fantastic bluegill fishing; one-pounders were common. But there was no limit, size or creel, on bluegill, and two years later it was all over. That lake hasn't had bluegill fishing to amount to anything since.

Shellcracker are a protected fish on Barkley and Kentucky Lakes, they were given sportfish status a few years back. You are allowed only twenty shellcracker per day/per angler and I'm thrilled they put this limit in place. We went down to Barkley for the first time this May and it was just an unbelievable experience for us. You've got to be there in person to understand what it's like pulling in thirteen inch shellcracker that are built like dinner plates. I started to throwback some very large females during the last few days of our trip because I felt like I was robbing the fishery of future trophies.

A true shellcracker fisherman isn't a numbers man anyway, now a bluegill fisherman, that's a totally different story.

Twenty fish per day is not protected. One might say it's better than no limit, such as is the case on most waters statewide; but twenty is about fifteen too many. Unlike bluegill, shellcracker only spawn once yearly, so they can't take as much pressure as bluegill. I doubt the fishery will last if the current regulations remain.

I am no authority on anything about fisheries . Am not disputing anything . The state lakes in north MS .were loaded with large redear and bluegills back in the 70's and they were caught by the hundreds daily . When the state started charging 5 dollars a day per person to fish from the banks most quit fishing them . You can still catch a fair number of good ones but nothing as they did earlier . IT would take a season now to catch what was weekly back then . look at the record fish from Lamar Bruce , Tippah, trace to see what yr. they were caught .there are a few that have caught a bream from these lakes lately but 30 yrs. ago it was not a big deal as it is today .

It's far more likely that the removal of hundreds of big sunfish daily is what caused the decline in the fisheries, and the daily fee just happened to come along as the fisheries were already going downhill from overharvest.

If your life depended on catching a bluegill over a pound in one day's fishing, would you rather fish a remote lake that had not been fished in twenty years, or one that had been fished by hundreds or thousands of anglers a year for years?

Maybe we should all take up checkers and eat the Tilapia and silver carp we are being told to eat by the retailers. I used to be decent at checkers.(Kidding) I agree that there should be limits imposed on Bluegill/Sunfish harvest and that may be variable depending on where you live. But frankly I might be that guy eating a bass from time to time. We have an abundance of Kentucky bass in my home lake and we do eat a couple from time to time. I don't see myself as a villain for that. Anyone else is welcome to their opinion of me. I do eat bluegill and catfish also, but I don't catch 100s of either and keep them all. Unfortunately man by our very nature requires boundaries to be "civilized" about anything. That is why we had to go buy some elk a while back so we could re-introduce them in Kentucky. Sad to say but left unchecked the top of the food chain will eventually kill off the rest of the chain and end up wondering what happened.