Pond Boss Forums INTRO Common Pond Q&A (archives) An Essay On Bluegill Harvest

As always, we are interested in hearing and learning about growing large BG and appropriate harvest rates from more 'southern waters'. To my knowledge there is little information published regarding BG harvest in southern waters with longer growing seasons. It will be very interesting to see and hear how 'southern results' vary from the 'northern results' mentioned above.

Suggestion. To improve your management baseline information, I suggest that you measure length and write it down for every BG that is caught, harvested or released. This valuable information will allow you to compare current BG population size structure to future population structures.

It helps to use smaller hook (No. 8 or 6) with live bait such as earthworms or wax worms. Smaller hooks such as No. 10-12 allow you to catch smaller BG such as 3"-4" in addition to largest BG. If you plot this data or put it into a bar graph it will be a baseline comparison for all future angler catches. Thus you will be able to see if the BG catches or population is shifting toward smaller, larger or same sizes. While recording data it is also a good idea to keep track of how many LMB are caught for every 20 BG.