Thread: Bluegill Location

I fish a small river flowage that is about 245 acres. I can catch smallmouth, walleye, perch, rock bass, crappie, and northern pike, BUT I am struggling finding the bluegill! The flowage has a maximum depth in the main channel leading up to the dam of 16'. Average depth is around 6-8'. In the middle of the flowage I have found a few humps surrounded by deeper water that rise to about 5-6' and are weed covered. The weed cover is submerged and is 2-3' below the surface. I have done really well on and around these catching perch, bass, pike, walleye, and a few crappie. No bluegill around these. The problem is, I suck at bluegill fishing and don't know where to find them! This flowage has the shoreline covered with deep weeds, shallow weeds, reed edges, and some occasional fallen timber. There is a main channel and branch channels. The branch channels are 3-7' deep with a lot of weed cover and shallow shorelines.

What kind of structure and area should I be looking for??? The flowage is called Bagley Flowage and is located in northeast Wisconsin in case you want to look at Google Maps Satellite view. Any suggestions from you bluegill pros would be appreciated!

Originally Posted by Ketchn

without knowing for sure that water body , it might be there just are not many numbers of them in there , some spots just don't hold enough bluegill to make them a good spot for bluegill ....
its a challenge some times to find them , but on a small water body "if" there were numbers of them to target it would seem you would find them with what knowledge you have of that lake ....
if they are in there , they might be on the edges of grass beds , but my bud who fishes every summer up there in that area never shows me any bluegill ....

About 20 years ago I saw old timers in their boats fishing them all the time. Most times now, I am the only one on the river. I remember where I saw them fishing on submerged weeds off reed edges, but I can't find them there. I think the biggest problems is there are miles of river edge the are identical on each side of the river. In small back bays or at the mouth of, I just get tore up by small northern pike. The perch are there and I have had some great days fishing them. Crappie are there and are hit or miss. I have always struggled finding bluegill on a river system!