Thanks, Cecil for the kind words.
After evaluating at least a dozen ponds with trophy-sized bluegills I've concluded that the males will grow a little larger than the females in most cases. The one exception being that gravid, pre-spawn females may weight a little more albeit shorter than the males in those same ponds.
I think that in smaller ponds with decent populations of mature bluegill that a person can make a significant impact on top-end growth by targeting and removing females only, the reason being that this may slightly reduce the number of young-of-the-year available each spring to compete with the adult fish. This way you can impact the overall number of adults (which I guarantee you can do) without risking overharvest since you would be unlikely to remove more than half of all adults by removing only females. Sometime maybe we can get into identification or sexing of fish.
