AL,
Actually you can take SOME males but you should put most of the BIG males back if you want big bluegills according to the lastest research by Illinois Natural History Survey.
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/chf/pub/surveyreports/jul-aug99/bluegill.html Male bluegills grow the largest and the fastest, and if you harvest too many, smaller males will reach sexual maturity and take their place that normally wouldn't until later. Once fish reach sexual maturity, growth slows significantly as more energy gets put into gonadal development vs. growth. Also nesting behavior slows growth as energy is put into building the nests and guarding them, and the fish don't feed much if at all -- although they will attack baits put into their nest.
Harvesting females which produce up to 50,000 eggs per pound of body weight doesn't really hurt the population, and may even reduce the total number of hungry mouths in the pond leaving the rest to grow larger.
Of course selectively harvesting the largest of any fish could be removing the genes of fish that have a propensity of growing the largest that could hve been passed on.
