Interesting trip this afternoon, 9-26

7 Attachment(s)

I promised myself that I'd be going fishing this afternoon provided there were no rain showers in the forecast. Looked a bit iffy for a while but I packed up and hit the water just after 3. There was a bit of a breeze here at the house but at water's edge, it was noticeably stronger. We're starting to get some fall colors around, too.

Attachment 385213

Attachment 385214

Attachment 385215

Not a lot and certainly not impressive but summer is over for sure. I clipped on some Stingers and got ready to do battle with the breeze. I was in to fish right off the bat:

Attachment 385216

Attachment 385217

The bluegill were very active today; most of the marks I saw on the sonar were just a foot or 2 off the bottom once I got out away from the weed line. No matter what depth I was in out to around 22', they were just suspended up that foot or 2. 16-20' seemed to offer the best action for them. There were hitting my Stingers hard, all 3 colors. Most were in the 8"+ range, fighting hard and biting often. Took nearly an hour for the first crappie to come in to the boat. It came as I doubled up on strikes and I didn't get a picture. I really had my hands full around that time as the annoying breeze had blossomed in to real wind; I fought it all afternoon. It had me twisting and turning every which way. However, I think it worked to my advantage as I seemed to get a lot of hits just after getting the boat straightened out again, as though the herky-jerky movements and changes of speed and direction were provoking them in to biting. Surprisingly, I kept my cool and just went with the conditions and enjoyed the bluegill action. My 2nd crappie also came as one of a double and I wasn't able to snap a picture of him, either. Here is another snap of one of the nice 'gills I was landing today.

Attachment 385219

I lost 2 very nice crappie right at the side of the boat, just as I was leading them in to the net. Both would have been 12" or a bit better, really nice fish.
Total for the day would be upwards of 30 bluegill, 1 big yellow perch and the 4 crappie, 2 landed, 2 lost. Tired of fighting the wind, I called it day about 6:15 and headed for home.

Oh, and one other little thing. Not long after I got on the water, I heard a pretty loud engine rev up; looked around and spotted this white bellied gas hawk TAKING OFF FROM THE OTHER END OF THE POND!

Attachment 385220

That's a first for me while fishing! I never noticed it parked down there at the other end when I got on the water.

Very nice day and pictures. Congrats!

Nice afternoon and some great bluegills. Keep it up. Tight lines to you.

Great bluegill action. I'm sure it was fun.

Nice read and pics. It's weird I haven't seen any bluegills around. But again they must be somewhere. It's hard on a river to locate them because it's so big and complicated with tributaries and setbacks.

I think I might have to do some pond fishing, where they can be found at least somewhere within a limited area.

I do remember last year around this time on the river, when I found a bluegill school that was so aggressive they were hitting my small float. In fact, more than the jig under it. So out of curiosity I switched to a small 1-1/2" Rapala floating plug I had, and man they hit that. Mostly 8-9 inch fat healthy fish. They fought really hard. It was great!

I'm hoping that's going to repeat again this year. Right now there are millions of some kind of small baitfish near the surface in the evenings, dimpling the surface with shining silver flashes. Especially On the river setbacks. I don't know what they are. It looks like the whole water surface is shimmering sometimes.