BOTTOM-MOP FOR BIG BLUEGILLS
 When
I Sent The News North And Double-Dipping 'Gills
Editor's Note: You don't have to go to private ponds
in the South to take monster-sized bluegills. You may
find Goliath-sized 'gills right under your nose where
thousands of anglers fish every year. Many of the best
bluegill hotspots never see an angler because most of
us have believed that bluegills bed only on the banks.
However, I've learned if you want to catch this scrappy
panfish that fights hard and tastes delicious, learn
to fish offshore on deep-water structure. This week,
I'll tell you the best summer tactics for finding and
catching bluegills.
 With
an ice chest full of bluegills and shellcrackers in
my trunk, I headed home to call my friend in New York.
(see day 3) When I described the method we had used
to fish in the middle of the lake to locate the schools
of bluegills, record the spots where we'd found the
bluegills on my GPS receiver and alternate between those
five sites to catch bluegills all afternoon, my buddy
had to test the tactic on the Yankee 'gills. Two  nights
later, my phone rang. "I'm the hero of my house,"
my buddy said. "We fished in the middle of a pond,
used your bottom-mopping tactic and caught limits of
bluegills for two days. My fishing buddy and I just
had a fish-fry for everyone in the neighborhood. He
thinks I'm brilliant, and my wife thinks I'm great because
I just fed all our neighbors. Don't tell anybody what
we're doing, John."
Why Double-Dip 'Gills?:
The weather remained hot and dry for the next two weeks.
I wondered if I could find the big bluegills in the
same spots in the middle of the lake where Smith and
I had fished before. I called Smith and asked if he
minded if I came up that week, brought my GPS receiver
and tried to locate some of those same schools of bluegills
we
had fished for two weeks before. I asked if he thought
those bream would hold in those same places in the middle
of the lake all summer. "Sure, John, come on up,"
Smith said. We used my GPS receiver to return to the
same spots Smith and I had fished two weeks earlier.
To my surprise, we caught just as many big bluegills
and shellcrackers as we had before. To liven up the
neighborhood with a Friday night, summertime fish-fry,
try these bottom-mopping tactics, and don't be afraid
to move away from the bank.
TOMORROW: DIFFICULT BLUEGILL PROBLEMS AND EIGHT KEYS
TO TAKING THEM
|
