He was about 7 inches long and hit the shiner harder than I've seen in a while. I thought I had a large catfish hooked until he came to the surface.





Maybe not a trophy class, but I smiled and thought of some of you trophy Bluegill enthusiasts when I landed him.

That's a nice chunky male. Good job. Did you release him?

Funny you ask... I put him in the keeper basket and he escaped. Luckily I had taken pictures. Should I keep the large males or release them? It appears that I have a healthy population of Bluegill, I've seen and caught fish from 3 inches to this big.

Also see plenty of young juvenile's that are smaller than 3 inches.

I would release all healthy males, just like you did, and put most of your harvest effort into female fish. That is, of course, if your goal is to raise big bluegill.

My goals are to be able to catch a lot of bluegills when I want to fish for them. I don't have to have all big ones. I just like being able to catch bunches of them. Especially when I have family and friends over.

Bruce you said my fish was a male, however it looks a lot more like the female in this picture?



The notes on this pic say the male is on the right and female on the left.

I believe in the photo above that you are looking at coppernose bluegill. The one on the left is a female and the one on the right is a male.

Your fish above appears to be a standard native bluegill (not coppernose) and has the classic nape spotting that we see in males.

Have you read any of the archived posts on sexual ID of bluegill? If not, you should look them up, or order back issues of the magazine where Cody, Baird and Condello describe ways to ID bluegill by sex.

I also resized your picture. When you post them in such a large format they become cumbersome to view and respond to.

I think a couple things are going on here in this thread. Photo of 2 fish above this post seems to me to be of 2 coppernose BG not regular BG. Others may comment. IMO fish on Rt is male and on Lft is female. Identification has to be made primarily on color pattern because gill flap shapes are not clearly visible due to angle of camera and position of fish flaps. Dark hue of male in comparison to lighter green of female from SAME population, verify dark one is male. Yellow breast of left fish strongly indicates female. Careful comparison of gill flaps is very important in helping to verify sex of both fish. It is always best to compare several to numerous similar sized fish from same water before decisions are made, especially if restocking single sex fish or sex determination is important.

Photo of ericdc's regular BG is from a different water body so this has to be considered when comparing the fish from the two photos. Features of ericdc's fish that indicate male are good photo angle for seeing the squarish, boxy gill flap, typical early spawn season color (not intense or dark), and distinct black tipping of nape scales (a very distinctive feature of males).

If ericdc just wants to catch lots of medium sized bluegill (5-7") then harvest of BG regarding sex can be random. However harvesting with a bias toward more females will eventually over time tend to produce larger average size of BG providing the BG are not allowed to become too abundant. Overabundant BG tends to result in smaller BG.

It is interesting that Cody and Condell responded at practically the same time and both said basically the same thing. It is no wonder they were two of the co-authors on articles about sexing BG.

I noticed that after posting it. My apologies to the bandwidth purchaser here. Those are coppernose bluegill. I can understand the differences and will look up some pictures of various bluegill varieties and sexes.

thanks for the info Bill Cody. I have a lot to learn.

Here this should help.

Even I noticed the 'pointy' ear flap of the rather large female on the left(thanks to PB and the BG gurus). I would certainly not object to thinning the population of females of this magnitude.

For sexing BG, the dark spot on the soft dorsal is a weak diagnostic character. The photos of the urogenital pores of male and female were taken during non-breeding season.

As with most fish species, there is a more pronounced difference between male and female urogenital pores during spawning season.

Real purdy BG there, eric!

Will there be a big change in general body color during breeding season compared to non breeding season?

At least with the males most definitely!

How about this bluegill I caught today? I am saying it's a male but it wasn't quite as chunky and colorful as the above pictured one.

This one went into the keeper basket. I'll release him if you all think I should. If the females would bite, I'd keep em, but I've just been catching males.

I would say male also, Eric. Not horribly buffed up, but note the "helmet" (brow) above the eyes. In a breeding pond, one does not have to be 100% accurate in sexing; any success in pulling out more females helps.

I would return him if he were one of the bigger males, cull if one of the smaller. Make sure the big bully male BG remain in the pond to kick sand in the face of the 90 gram juvenile males, stealing their girlfriends and sending them back to Gold's Gym for another year to bulk up so they can compete.

Theo I will release him I suppose since he is one of the bigger males i've caught, however the stunted bass in the basket are going to be eaten.

I would also like to make a point that those fish baskets are really hard on adult fish that are not adapted to them. As a taxidermist I do a lot of caudal fin repair on fish that are placed into baskets. I would decide right then and there if you are going to keep or throw back. A stressed fish may swim off but that doesn't mean he won't die up to three days later.

That fish has quite a large eye. Definitely a male but doesn't appear to be exceptionally fast growing.

good advice Cecil. Most of them that go in the basket get cleaned unless they escape. I'm going to rig up some kind of cage or something soon so I don't lose anymore fish.