Rowly,

The secret to growing large northern pure strain bluegills is to keep their numbers down with a good predator population (largemouth bass) and not to overharvest the largest ones.

I also feed mine Aquamax feed that is for predators that is about 42 percent protein. I think you can get by with less protein for bluegills.

However, many of my bluegills have no interest in the artifical feed. I think it has do with the abundant natural feed I have in the pond, and most were not feed trained although in many cases that is not necessary with bluegills.

I also have so many bass I feed, that many are intimidated by the bass at feeding time. I had a handful of bluegills that I planted that were about 8 inches from a natural lake that ended up pushing 11 inches in 2 more years(0ne was 11 inches) that fed along with the bass. However for the most part most of my bluegills feed on natural feed.

One option is to purchase feed trained regular bluegills from a hatchery but they are hard to find. Most hatcheries only feed their hybrids and the regular gills are seined out of ponds that only have natural feed.

I purchased about 100 feed trained gills from a hatchery a couple of years ago in Illinois and they are as wide as they are long. However some of those have reverted back to natural feed also.

If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.