...and got some pictures of some really nice specimens.

Pictures to come later.

I'll start saving up drool.

Bruce if you persist in teasing us then I will be forced to start inserting pics of small scrawny BG in your posts as if they were yours. :p

These pictures will be exceptional. And meeting Bill and Cecil was a once in a lifetime experience. There are very few people that are nicer men then these two.

NEDOC you should come to the PB convention. You will get to meet many outstanding people like Bruce , Bill , Cecil , Bob, Dave , Theo and a lot more. PB is full of great folks.

ewest, I'm planning on it. I had to miss this year due to continuing education hours that I needed that weekend.

They were pretty dang big.

So what is the hold up on the pics and story? Inquiring minds want to know !! Are you waiting on Bill and Cecil to get home with the tank transporting the CSBG to far away places ?

Would it help if we ask nicely?

Ha ha ewest, I got a sneak peak of Bruce's big gills from the seining operation on Bill's camera last night.

I have to echo Nedoc's sentiments, "meeting Bill and Cecil was a once in a lifetime experience. There are very few people that are nicer men then these two."

It was a very enjoyable evening last night having dinner in Denton and then talking and fishing at Bruce's ponds.

I took a picture with my cell phone and would post it but I lost it.

Hurry up and post the pics. I'm running out of places to keep this stuff.

Cody's got 'em on his camera. I'm guessing that if we rely on him to post them it will be sometime in late '08...

Maybe he can email them to me so I can post them. We got about 30 BG (BIG!), 15 RES ( ), 8 YP and one 3 inch bluegill (was bound to happen someday in the big pond--not a big deal).

The next night Cecil caught a ten inch bluegill, I caught a ten inch bluegill and a YP, and I also caught the absolutely strangest fish I've ever encountered at my ponds. It was a 5.5 inch HSB. Now since I haven't raised any since '05, and since I only stocked 9 inch or better HSB at the time, then I'm not sure what to think of this little son of a gun. Reproduction, possibly??

Easy answer -- it is not a HSB but is a RES that morphed to look like a HSB so it could sneak up on you and take a bite.

Cody only has dial up -- it will be 09 if he tries to email them to you. Get a CD from him by mail .

Without pictures, it's just another fish story, right George? :p

You just wait. Cody's got some nice photos. :p

"IT ALL DEPENDS"

Bruce did Bill and Cecil take some CSBG home with them ?

Yes. 205 that were age-1, 95th to 98th percentile at 4-5.25 inches, and 12 that were age-2 at 6.5 to 8 inches and a couple of age-3. Really good, healthy fish with good Wr's, but they hadn't been fed for several days to facilitate transport.

This thread is reminding me of a movie I saw years ago, the premise of which was that we had never landed on the moon, and the space program was an elaborite ruse.....now I would never accuse the good doctor of DELIBERATELY spreading such a deception, but long term exposure to nitrous oxide has been known to have very deleterious effects, including depletion of vitamin B12 levels, which can lead to pernicious anemia and very bizarre halucinations which can be very real to the sufferer.

Provide photos, please, to humiliate me and send me screeling back to envious lurker status.

Yea, but when he does, you get that long arm thing. Looks like you can't win.

Here's one...

Here's another...

'Bye, y'all.

Thanks Yolk you did us a service. You are pardoned and restored to your prior status.

Bruce that first fish looks like it was run over by the fish truck. That is the roundest BG I have ever seen. :p

Here's a nice one from today. Please don't give me too much grief for being unable to take a picture of myself. All of the photos end up looking like this. :rolleyes:

I think even Bill Cody and Cecil were impressed with the roundness. Even I was impressed by the roundness.

He is so round he does not have a lateral line but instead has a lateral curve.

Since I've been allowed to post again, I'd like to propose a new tool for assessing the status of one's bluegill population:

"Dr" or "rD"


This is, of course, the "relative diameter", which may be a more sensative measure of how pampered one's 'gills are than length or weight.

I think Dr. Bruce's bgill are predestine to grow beyond 12". We might get to see a 13"er in 3 yrs (2009).

Yep those sure were monster bluegills! But they are not easy to catch. Don't let anybody tell you pellet fish are easy to catch. Bruce's ponds were proof of that.

I put the ones I got from Bruce in the cage last night and they were already feeding rambunctiously this morning at first light and again this evening! That's a very good sign for fish that have just been beat around for 12 hours.

Had a scare this morning though. For some reason I woke up at about 3:50 A.M. and happened to look out at the pond and saw a Great Blue Heron standing on the cage! (It was a bright moonlit night). There was no cover on the cage! I didn't have time to build a cover for the cage before I left and was planning on doing it first thing in the morning. The good news is he was standing four feet above the bottom of the cage where the fish were -- so it's doubtful he could reach them. I would have run him off or some other fate but he flew off. I think he gave up in frustration. And I did check and it looks like all of them are still there. Got the cage cover done this morning along with shading. No more worries about herons. I'll try and take a pic of the cage tommorrow and post it.

Can you imagine hauling fish for 12 hours, consuming a few hundred dollars in gas and a heron eats them while you sleep? Man would that have been awful if that had happened!

BTW I'm calling them Nebraska Condello strain bluegills from here on out. Has a nice ring to it.

Thank you Bruce for everything and you were one heck of a host! Thank you Bill Cody for your insight and keeping me company on the road.

Major scare on the heron. Bet that got you going faster than any Starbucks ever could.

Based on the fate of Wickedinhere's recent thread, I would suggest a more "moderate[-or approved] response to our feathered fiends whoops I meant friends.

It all depends.

Words cannot express how thrilled I am to hear that.

It's just not right to subject those bluegills to torment and teasing...such a lil' head and round body. Sorta like me Those are some awesome specimen. You wanna lease them out for stud service?

Bruce, SUPER CSBG – congratulations.

I believe width to be important criteria in determining BG “size”.

To date our CNBG seem to top-out at about 11 inches long and become wider and thicker.
I think I will begin measuring width, or girth if more commonly used in fish measurement.

What do you think?

Cindy says girth is more important than length. (Which is odd because she doesn't usually comment on fish matters)

I am happy CSBG have made it from the Midwest (North Central definition) to the Midwest (Midwest definition). 1000 miles closer to getting some Cornhusker blood on my football team!

You're sneaky.

never under-estimate the reach of the Gallus underground RR

Cecil I bet you can fatten a few of those CSBG up and talk Bass Pro into buying them at top dollar. Just tell them they are the roundest most colorful BG ever from IN - make that the Midwest. Now that would be sneaky.

Here's another one from that seine haul.



I think about 25 of the 30 seined were something like this.

If Bruce doesn't mind I will breed them myself from now on, and potentially sell any extra offspring, but if I don't cross them with anything else they will always be Condello strain bluegills. Even if I do cross them with something else they will still have the Condello name i.e. Condello X Baird strain.

As far as selling to Bass Pro that is always a possibility. However Bruce has some potential there as well. With Nebraska being Cabelas' headquarters I would think that is a possibility for Bruce too.

Bruce all those guys have looonngg ear flaps. Same genes ?

Wait -- I thought Bill had all the pics. That is kinda like extending ones arms toward the camera when the fish pic is taken. You must have some pics also or did Bill snail email them to you.

Cecil I have been telling Bruce for some time that he could sell some of his outcasts for top $. I was kidding him in the post above -- but it is true , you could do that.

Soon yours will be Baird strain BG . Then you can sell them back as new and improved. Sounds like China -- get a few then copy , copy, copy and sell, sell ,sell. Some good marketing ideas -- no.

I think it's just natural variation. The parents came from a couple of locations that I always admired the size and health of the fish I caught.

Sell them back as new and improved and Baird strain bluegills. I like that.

I think I'll come up with some Baird strain yellow perch and sell them to Bruce.

I'd love to see some girth measurements on your fish, George. They look so tall!

Bill is systematically sending them to me. There is one picture yet to come where I'm trying to hold two of them that's pretty awesome.

Who was harder to hold, Bill or Cecil?

If you hold Cecil upside down he'll lie totally still. Bill cusses when he was held upside down.

Bill got some pictures of this one that I caught the second day. Cecil caught one just like it.

Jighead and worm teaser?

Well, since we're all bragging, here's one of my BG....



Oh, the pain I feel....

Yessir.

Relax. Take a deep breath. Manage you pond and give that BG time to grow as big as Bruce's. Until that time, do what I do -
enjoy playing with the Bruce Condello action figure:

Bruce - now you know why your well pump broke!

Jeff don't worry here are some of mine. They all start out this way.

Thanks Theo and Ewest, I appreciate the support. Pondmeistering is not for the impatient. I'm gonna have to order one of those action figures, I wonder if you can purchase additional pins, six doesn't seem near enough.

Love this photo.



Anybody know how big across a five-gallon bucket is? When stretched out normally these fish had it pretty much covered.

Well, they are pretty nice gills.

But you'd think, being dentists fish, he would have done something about that underbite!

Theo??

Any comments about voo-doo dolls? Anything?

Bruce, you should be feeling a stabbing pain on the left side of your forehead, as well as the third toe on your right foot.

Have I mentioned lately that I hate you? :p

I knew it was too good to be true….

Selective breeding, selective harvesting, genetic manipulation, years of pond management experience. We all were led to believe that this was how Bruce had achieved raising such impressive Blue Gill.

But I couldn't help but thinking that others have followed the same path and yet not raised such impressive fish.

So I hired a crack team of detectives to investigate Mr. Condello and determine what the truth was behind his behemoth Blue Gill. And now I'm here to report the truth to all. The detectives observed Mr. Condello sneaking out each evening under the cover of darkness and pouring something from a bottle into each of breeding ponds. The next morning the detectives found this bottle in Bruce's trash.....

groan!

11 1/4 inches inside measurement on top of the bucket!

I just got done fishing the area that Cody and Cecil and Nedoc and I seined and caught a very big bluegill. I didn't have my digital camera, so I took some regular photos. The fish was just under 11 inches, and about 3.5 inches thick. The regular photos were taken with an underwater camera, so I put him in a tank with some quarters to see if I could get a decent shot. I'll have to take it in for developing tomorrow. With my luck the film was probably bad from sitting around for two years.

I also noticed a big area without weeds, and I wondered what the heck that was all about, so I walked right into it with my waders and right there in front of me were about seven nesting male redears. I got straight out of there! Nice to know where they're at, so I can watch my back.

3.5" THICK??? Like side-to-side thick???

Yes, sir. I tried to take a top photo in the tank, too.

3.5"!!! Yikes!

I don't know if I can fully imagine what a 3.5" thick BG looks like. That can't be healthy, Bruce...you need to stop what you're doing and allow your obese fish to lose some weight, lest we all feel inferior...

Too late.

I'm tellin' ya, this has to be one of the goofiest pictures ever posted in the history of Pond Boss. I put the bluegill in a tank, since Theo's always giving me a hard time about my long arms, and I put quarters on the bottom of the tank to give perspective. Then I used a old underwater compact camera. I thought the picture was going to be all beautiful and colorful, but this is what I got.







Now be honest with me. Does this look like a really big bluegill? I'll take it like a man. Now remember, he's a few inches behind the quarters--so no long arm quotient here. I wish I would have put the quarter right under him. It's a 24 mm. lens so it kind of makes the quarter look a little bigger than they really are (the opposite problem I usually have ) I measured his actual width and it wasn't quite 3.5, but it was a little over three, so sorry for the exaggeration.

At the very least, the pictures are good enough to show that those are really dimes and not quarters as we were led to believe.

Who needs long arms when one can use vague currency?

Bruce nice fish ! I thought those were half dollars. Another crazy Dr. Frankenbruce creation ?

The lesson for today is on color. Repeat after me color is based on light. Light diffuses when it goes through water. No light - no color , goofy diffused light underwater - goofy low color pics. :p

Those look like 10 lira pieces. At any rate, that is a whale of a fish. Please, let me see a filet of him. :p

I hope everyone knew I was kidding. Burger, is a 10 lira piece like a dime?

I'm not lettin you off the hook that easy....No, it's more like a silver dollar.

While you guys debate foreign currencies (I think there is a "Foreign Currency Size Forum"), maybe you can comment on the massive helmet that this particular bluegill possesses.

"Massive helmet"? How about "so large it's unnatural looking"? :p

Huge helmet; not so large a breast-plate. Darn nice fish.

I was hoping to see an overhead shot to show his 3.5" thickness, compared to one of those big stone coins from Tonga.

--------------------

The "Ask the Boss" forum - debating and debasing foreign currency since 2002.

How much would bluegill of that size weigh?

Used to fish in a pond with bluegill that size.

Somewhere around 1.5 pounds.