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ORIGINAL: Champlain Islander

Yesterday I got 90 pounds of bluegills but today wasn't that good and I got 34 pounds. Tomorrow is another day.

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ORIGINAL: TeeJay

In 2 days 124 lbs of sunfish? My god what do you do with all of them. Our limit in MN is 20 on a good day that is 10lbs of fish. wow

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ORIGINAL: Champlain Islander

I fish Lake Champlain which is huge and the pan fish are really prolific. I have been fishing them since around 1990. There are many people like me who go out every day and fish for flats. Some go for perch but many people like sunnies better. I eat some but sell most of whatI catch. There are fish buyers all around the area and they will buy any sunnie, bluegill, crappie over 8" with a limit of 25, and perch over 7". They pay by the pound uncleaned so it is real easy. Fish all day and then bring your bucket (s) to the buyer and he weighs them and pays. Before anyone flips out I need to mention that the fish are filleted at a processing facility and sold as fresh fish. I have talked with the state biologists and most feel that fishing pressure has no negative impact on the pan fish population. Several years ago some politicians lobbied for limits to be placed on yellow perch. The biologists were against it on Champlain since it is too vast to be over fished. The politicians won out and we went through several years with a 30 pound or 75 fish limit. No limits were placed on flat fish other than the state limit on crappie which is 25 fish per day. Long story short the perch started to get smaller which was a result of over crowding. The biologists netted a measured area and counted all the perch and bait in the area. They then did scale samples on all the perch and discovered they were all old stunted perch. The limits have now been removed. When I started to fish for flats my group was about the only people who did it. Now there are lots of people who have learned to finesse fish and in my estimation the fish are bigger and there are more every year. We are catching some sun fish and blue gills that are over 1/2 pound and some go around a pound. Not bad for a northern lake. It is relatively easy to catch a 50 pound pail (7 gal bucket) a day. Some days at the end of the season when the ice is going out we get close to 200 pounds a day. Lots of people around here fish for them on open water after the ice goes out but I am usually catch and release bass fishing then.

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