June is a great month for bluegill fishing

June is finally here and there isn’t a bet­ter month to do a lit­tle bluegill fish­ing. I usu­ally pre­fer bass fish­ing but there are time when catch­ing a mess of bluegill can be fun and tasty. It is also a per­fect type of fish­ing to get the kids lots of fun and easy action.

Bluegills are one of our most com­mon lake and pond species found in Ohio and you couldn’t ask for a bet­ter fish for kids to chase after.　Sure, catch­ing a nice size bass is a thrill, but to young­sters with short atten­tion spans, bluegills offer a much bet­ter option.

Catch­ing bluegills is very easy com­pared to most types of fish­ing and the action can be red hot when you find a school of them.　Con­stant action is a key when kids are along and bluegills are usu­ally will­ing to comply.

The best part about fish­ing for bluegills is that you can get by with inex­pen­sive equip­ment.　Using ultra-light rods and reels allows you to use smaller line and will increase your fun when fight­ing a bluegill, but my kids have caught tons of bluegills on their Snoopy poles when they were lit­tle tikes.

You can also get along fine with cane poles but you don’t see those used too much any­more, at least not as much as when I was kid.　By far my favorite way to catch bluegills is with a fly rod because a nice sized gill and feel like a mon­ster on a fly rod.

Ultra-light gear is the pre­ferred method because you can use lighter line.　Using four to eight pound test line is the best choice.　If you are using live bait, which is the eas­i­est method for catch­ing bluegills, stay with the smaller hooks.　I pre­fer to use longer shanked hooks as they are eas­ier to remove from the small bluegill mouth, which can be dif­fi­cult at times espe­cially when they swal­low the entire bait and hook.

Add on a split shot sinker a few inches above the hook to keep it down and I rec­om­mend using a bob­ber to detect bites and more impor­tantly to pro­vide some weight to help with casting.

A com­mon mis­take made in pan fish­ing is using too large of a bob­ber.　Try to get by with as small of a bob­ber as pos­si­ble.　Using a bob­ber that is too big can cause you to miss a lot of strikes and often a bluegill will grab the bait and feel that resis­tance of the heavy bob­ber and let go before you can set the hook.

As far as bait, there are lots of options but I pre­fer using live worms over any other choice.　They are easy to find and bluegills love them. The key is to only put on enough of the worm to cover the hook.　Any more than that and the bluegills will just sit there and nib­ble at your bait cre­at­ing lots of frus­tra­tion for you.　Crick­ets, meal worms, wax worms, grasshop­pers all work as well.　If you want to go the arti­fi­cial route, small spin­ners and small flies (both dry and wet) work fine as well.

Find­ing bluegill is really easy in most ponds.　The eas­i­est time of the year to catch them is when they are spawn­ing. You can prac­ti­cally sight fish for them look­ing for their dish shaped nests in the shal­lows and usu­ally when you find one, you will find dozens.

Dur­ing this time, they will attack any bait that enters their nest.　Bluegills will spawn sev­eral times over the sum­mer if the body of water isn’t over­crowded with them, so keep an eye on the shal­lows in the next few weeks.

Typ­i­cally, with the extremely warm water tem­per­a­tures that you find in most ponds and lakes this time of the year, you will need to search a lit­tle deeper.　If the body of water has any qual­ity weeds at all, start your search there, espe­cially along the edges where the weeds stop and the water gets deeper.

Weeds pro­vide oxy­gen, food, and a place to hide from big­ger fish. Also check out deep humps or areas that break into flooded creek chan­nels or other deep water. Summer-time bluegill, espe­cially the big­ger ones, can be found at depths rang­ing from six to 10 feet. There they sus­pend just above the thermocline.

Man-made under­wa­ter objects also attract bluegill dur­ing the sum­mer. Many lakes and ponds con­tain anchored Christ­mas trees, brush shel­ters, tire reefs, and other fish attrac­tors that have been placed in the water. These objects, in addi­tion to boat docks or boats tied at one spot for sev­eral days, are pro­duc­tive hang­outs for bluegill.　In the fall, as the water starts to cool, the bluegills will head back to shal­lower water to put on the big feed in prepa­ra­tion for winter.

Sum­mer evenings are made for bluegill fish­ing.　It would be hard to find a bet­ter way to spend fam­ily time than to gather by a pond with some cool drinks and fish­ing rods.　I know your kids will enjoy it. Get out there and enjoy the sum­mer evenings while they are still here.

Until next time, Good Hunt­ing and Good Fishing!

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Jun 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.