Bing, do you practice catch and release with your BG?
Yes, I practice some degree of catch and release. I put back the very small and very large bluegill. The small ones to feed the bass and perhaps the larger bluegill, and the large ones, generally over eight inches. I keep the mid sized bluegill for dinner. I have caught many bluegill that showed obvious signs of being caught before.
Although I do not think that feeding materially changes the catchability of bluegill, sometimes when I have a lot of kids coming to the pond to fish I turn the feeder off for a day before they fish. The reason is, although I don't think feeding overall reduces the ability to catch them, I also believe that a hungry bluegill is more apt to bite than one which had been feeding recently.
