Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Spring time with a couple bluegill...

So George cajoled me to getting some nice pictures of my bluegill a few posts back... so much that I went to the store and got myself a nice digital kitchen scale.

The first 2 pics are to give a little perspective to the thickness of these fish.

Maybe you all can help me with the Wr on the last picture of the male..? I wish I would have had his dorsal up in full glory on the photo. The last 2 pics are the same fish. I had to throw in the smb pic for extra fun.

Nice smallmouth.

....you might want to be careful that the bluegill don't eat him.

That's not a bluegill that's Rush Limbaugh!

Seriously nice fish! Congrats! I wonder if that one will be a two pounder when it gets over 10 inches?

Those things look like the Goodyear Blimp! WOW!

You proud papa - amazing fish - thanks for giving us up North something to look forward to...

GOOD job on the pictures Aaron - GREAT job on the BG ....
WOW!!!!

WOW indeed!

Thanks guys for the kind words.. anyone going to do the math on the Wr?

Aaron, I kaint do no math but those are some fattys! What store did ya get the scales at, expensive?

Wow, beautiful fish. Congrats. I really like the bluegill smallmouth combo.

Probably too expensive.. lol.. but it does 1/8 of oz, has a simple zero out, a nice surface, and the display can be pulled out so it seemed to work well.

Food scale at Target

Looks like a great deal for the scale... Have you checked its accuracy with a known weight?

yep, it was dead on.. and super consistent..

did a bunch of research and the reviews on this were great

I purchased a similar scale and weighed a 3lb dumbell on it to find it well over three pounds. I took the scale to a pharmacy where they have known weights, and they said it was almost as accurate as the high dollar scales they use to measure medical ingredients. They were amazed at how accurate a $20 wal-mart scale was. Come to find out the plastic coating on the 3lb dumbell was adding weight and my scale was good enough to measure it.

And great pics Aaron!

Holy moly. Those are obscene! Any idea about how old they are?
Good job.

Thanks guys. Pond is just under 2 years old. Fish went in June 07, so 2.5-3 years old.

I'll have to keep that scale in mind Aaron. Not a bad price at all if it is that accurate.

If I did the calculations right, and that's a BIG IF!

The smaller BG:
8 5/8"(21.9 cm) has a standard weight of 8.6 oz(244 gm) according to Bruce's RW Chart Link. Your BG weighed 1 pound, 2 1/8th oz/18.125 oz(513.835 gm) according to the reading on the scale from your picture.

The math:
18.125/8.6=2.107 which is a relative weight of 210.7.

and

The larger BG:
9 1/8"(23.2 cm) has a standard weight of 10.4 oz(295 gm) according to Bruce's RW chart. Your BG weighed 1 pound, 6 1/8th oz/22.125 oz(627.23 gm) according to the reading on the scale.

The math:
22.125/10.4=2.127 which is an incredible relative weight of 212.7!

Very impressive!!!

Now, I had to convert inches to centimeters and ounces to grams to work with Bruce's metric chart but I think I did the conversions correctly. So I would say, those are some crazy plump BG!

In the mentioned link above, Bruce mentions the highest RW he's seen in a BG was about 170... He said he feels anything over 180 is not possible. So, perhaps Bruce can weigh in... Either I screwed something up(highly likely), Bruce is wrong and BG can have RW's over 180(highly unlikely) or your scale isn't quite accurate enough(possible).

Your math looks right. I did it as well, but it's fun to have others grade the 'test'.

It's interesting to compare the male BG to Archer's BG from a few weeks ago (I was drooling over that one) They weighed the same 1lb 6 oz, but this one was around 9" vs his that was 10". You can see where this dude is just round.

Bruce will weigh in later I'm sure, I shared these with my bigbluegill.com buddy before I posted. I think he's scheming about something.

Both of those BG are darn blimps! I can't wait to see what your fish look like when they are 7 or 8 years old!

Geeze. What are you feeding those things?

I was going to post a photo of a nice 10-incher I got yesterday. But, it would be like comparing Don Knotts to Arnold the Guvner.

What beauties!

Aaron, do I detect a copper nose on the big male BG?

When a bluegill is that big, how do the filets taste?

As an example, you know how when you get some fried chicken, and the legs are skinny but the meat tastes fine? Then you get a leg from somewhere esle and the thing is huge but tastes funky?

WOW Aaron. Great fish!

Barbarian.