That is right! last Thursday a buddy and I went out to a farm pond in western Iowa and drilled 4 holes. After about 2 hours of fishing we had 14 10-11'' blue gill. a really nice size for cleaning. With such a population of the blues the bass in the pond are stunted and only grow to about 10 inches. An unfortunate event.

Also got to try out my new Strikemaster Lazer hand auger! it was almost like a hot knife through butter! the ice was a good foot thick and the new auger made light work of it!

Do you have any pictures of them blue gills ?

I would like to see them.

In the spring, I go specifically for bluegills. I've noticed that in ponds that have a large bluegill population, the bass are small and vica verse.

I new if I posted the story I would have someone ask for pics. I planned on taking some pics of them but forgot, got them cleaned and remembered. I could take a pic of the baggie full of frozen filets but I don't think anyone would want to see that!

The only alternative is to invite us over for the fish fry.

Wow what huge gills. I fish for them almost every day in the winter and we rarely get any that large. Ours run 6-8" routinely but we get alot of them. My 2 day total for yesterday and the day before was 115 pounds with a few crappie thrown in. We can sell them whole here so no problem dealing with buckets of them.

Firehawk7309, I am sure all of you would like if did invite you for a fish fry...but I don't plan on doing that! LOL


Champlian Islander, I would have to say these are about the bigest I have ever caught...I have seen bigger. In May Each year a group of us get together at a lake in southern IA and 2 years ago some of the guys on the trip caught a few really big Blues and even a Redear. But they were just a few in with some 8 inchers. The ones we just caught ice fishing every one was that size!

jashoffa I got up this am and it was -14F and the wind was supposed to blow. I decided I would take the day off from fishing and do some work around here. Funny how the big ones seem to run together. 2 days ago I was getting some smallish bluegills and decided to move to a spot about 100' away. I started to get small to medium sunnies and then they became tankers. They were so big that I couldn't get my hand around them to get the hook out. I had to pin them to my leg to hold them. They were so aggressive that they were on about half way down on the slow step drop in about 8' of water. Every drop they bit and it lasted about 30 minutes. They were real big through the shoulders and filled a 5 gal bucket in a hurry. Got them on a 28" ul ice rod with 3 lb Trilene ice line on an orange rocker (size 8 hook) tipped with waxies.

Pulling in large fish with an ultralight ice rod is a lot of fun! I am going out tomarrow morning. If we do well you will hear about it. If we don't, you will really hear about IT!

Well, We went out. A different pond and didn't come up with much but we had a good time!