Winter 2015 Trophy Gills

Chasing Dogs Riding Bicycles

Chasing Dogs Riding Bicycles

 

I woke up in a panic. I’ve had nightmares before but this one was different. You see no one was chasing me, I wasn’t falling from a high place and I wasn’t behind the wheel seeing headlights. I had just knocked off a bluegill at the bottom of the hole that I suspected was an honest two pounds. In a world where most anglers rarely find a one pound bluegill, this was a nightmare of epic proportions. Waking up safe and sound on top of the covers and coming to the realization that I had never hooked this fish was a huge relief. Fish of this caliber, while extremely rare, do exist beyond my unusual dreams. Legendary bluegill hunter, Bruce Condello, and his group of bluegill aficionado friends, had shirts made of dogs riding bicycles because honest three pound bluegills are about as common. Bruce specifically has five bluegills to his credit that went an honest three pounds in his home state of Nebraska. If we were to start a fantasy bluegill fishing league, another of my top draft picks would have to be Clayton Davis of North Dakota. Davis recently captured a 12” two pound specimen late ice this past winter and has many other large fish to his credit. While scarfing down a gas station burrito on the way home from chasing bluegills all day may have led me to strange dreams of massive pie plates, I wanted more. I wanted to know what it really takes to land a personal best this ice season. How do these anglers select lakes that have the capabilities to produce this caliber of bluegill? Does it relate to the genetics of the fish or is it simply a matter of finding over fed obese populations? What voodoo mind tricks are involved in finding dogs riding bicycles?

North Dakota angler, Clayton Davis, has really made a name for himself the past few seasons with his social media bluegill pictures. Living in an area where walleyes and perch reign as king, he has found populations of giant untapped bluegills. Davis has a system of finding lakes that have trophy potential and it starts with looking into state stocking reports. He explained to me that you not only need to check available data on bluegill populations but also try to locate lakes with large pike. Lakes that boast populations of large pike typically have a balanced population of bluegills. Balanced populations have the potential to grow large fish versus lakes that have over abundant populations of fish that will end up stunted. Lakes will only support so many inches of fish so these large predators are needed to keep the population in check and the size good.

After selecting lakes with high caliber potential, Davis begins his search. He notes that pencil reeds are paramount when searching out a new lake and big bluegills are usually in close proximity. He will start shallow and work his way through the mid depth weed flats out into the basin. During late ice, which he considers the best time to chase pie plates, he often finds giants in as shallow as three feet of water. Using the weed fishing mode on his Vexilar FLX-28 allows Davis to see his jig and approaching fish in this heavy cover. He explains that the weed mode drowns out clutter from the weeds and has been instrumental in his success. When he begins to find medium sized fish, he will often drill a large concentration of holes to circle that immediate area. This allows him to dissect the weed beds and find the best vantage points. Places for fish to ambush prey, while also providing cover from large pike, are going to hold the largest gills. He described that a sort of pecking order exists in the world of bluegills and big fish will take these prime locations and push smaller fish out into the fringe areas.

The founding father of modern ice fishing, Mr. Dave Genz, has been chasing high caliber bluegills since childhood. He likes to look for big bluegills in lakes that will sometimes experience a partial winter kill. Yes, you read that correct. This is a theory that has worked well for Genz over the years. It goes back to a lake only being able to support so many inches of fish. A partial winter kill will thin the lake enough for the remaining fish to thrive and grow large. In order for this to happen at least part of the lake has to be shallow limiting oxygen after the weeds die off mid-winter. This is one of the few events that can reverse the effects of lakes that house over abundant stunted populations.

Pursuing pie plate sized bluegills is my passion. I have spent countless hours milling over maps and lake data looking for the next lake that may produce a fish over 11”. I have found a few factors that I like to look for when trying new waters. The first would be current. Lakes that are connected by rivers and have some current running through them for whatever reason are always top producers. While I have not completely figured out the correlation, give this trick a try and I promise you won’t be disappointed. The second thing I like to look for is the presence of shrimp. Amphipods or shrimp are high calorie meals for bluegills and can bulk up fish faster than other invertebrates. If obese gills are on the docket this winter, find the lakes with shrimp and current.

The other piece of the puzzle is genetics. Male bluegills pass on genetics to their offspring. Just as my children will never be as tall as Shaqueille O’Neil’s children, 7” male gills do not have the proper genetics to produce 11” bulls. Bruce Condello, owner of the website bigbluegill.com, has his own strain of bluegill called Condello gills. He has created this strain on a private pond that he manages by netting the pond every year in October. By taking out all bluegills except the largest 1/10 of 1 %, he has created a sort of super strain that can grow to 10” in sixteen months. One thing this tells us is that when anglers sort to keep the largest bluegills as table fare, we are genetically making our bluegill populations smaller. It is important that the bluegill aficionado recognizes this and opts to release big bulls and instead harvest more abundant smaller fish.

When hunting down giant Nebraska bluegills on public water, Bruce likes to look for lakes that house large concentrations of juvenile largemouth bass. It goes back to the theory of lakes only being able to support so many inches of fish. According to Condello, largemouth bass in the 11” range are eating machines and keep populations balanced. This allows remaining bluegills enough food to pack on pounds. He also looks for lakes that have, what he describes as, high water quality. Lakes that have submergent vegetation, clear water and low nutrient loads are his top choices. Clear lakes have better sunlight penetration for weed growth. These lakes with rooted vegetation produce oxygen from the bottom up so fish don’t get stressed and can continue to feed even throughout difficult periods of the year. Lakes that are highly nutrient laden lack the sunlight penetration to grow deep rooted vegetation so oxygen comes from algae and can dip to low levels. He also noted the importance of appropriate sized invertebrates for the fish to feed on in the early stages. If another species strips out the 1 mm sized invertebrates, young bluegills must become risk takers, leaving the protection of the weeds in search of an open water food source. This often leads to them being eaten by bass. He believes that having enough of the correct sized invertebrates is more important than the amount of available spawning habitat in a particular lake. Avoiding lakes with small stunted populations is paramount. Lakes with an overabundance of weeds will foster small fish and stunted populations. Ideal waters are comprised of less than 10% weeds. Heavily weeded lakes will protect more bluegills from predation than the food source can support and the population will stunt. Condello’s best advice for an angler looking to ice a personal best this winter is to first, find lakes that have big bluegills and second, sort through a lot of fish. Visualize the items that a large bluegill may eat that a medium sized bluegill cannot. Big bluegills have bigger mouths than their medium sized counter parts so bigger baits are often necessary. Pay attention to the depth that the bigger fish are using. Don’t be afraid to leave medium sized fish to search out giants.

The ice season is finally upon us and with it brings an opportunity to spend time with friends and family on the hard water again. Whether you or I ice a personal best or not this season, the charm is what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope (John Buchan). I guess I just love chasing dogs riding bicycles.

The author Garett Svir is the owner of Slab Seeker Guide Service http://www.slabseekerfishing.com and specializes in chasing big central Minnesota bluegills.

Overshadowed Bluegills- Slab Seeker Guide Service

Overshadowed Bluegills

By: Garett Svir

Photos: Kim Svir

Fall is a time of plenty for the outdoor enthusiast. While many pass the days in tree stands waiting for a wily buck to slip up, others wait in fields for fall migrants to pass overhead. Serious walleye anglers are experiencing their best big fish bite of the year over sharp breaks and deep water. Days are devoted to spending quality time with family over a warm bowl of chili while cheering on a favorite team. Families make pilgrimages north to view fall colors or hunt grouse. The fall wish list can get pretty long but for serious panfish aficionados, the fall signals a time of large concentrations of hungry panfish in predictable patterns. Fall brings an opportunity to target some of the largest specimens in a particular body of water. You’ll find that locating and catching bluegills in the fall is not much different than at first ice.

As late summer rolls around and water temperatures get high, big bluegills often evacuate shallow water leaving behind their smaller counterparts. These fish typically stay suspended on the thermocline until fall turnover. Once the water turns over, some of these large fish will return to the weeds while others stay suspended over deep water. Here they generally stay together in small schools of 10-20 fish. These sight feeders are always moving and grazing on anything that catches their eye. Bluegill’s food sources include such things as algae, aquatic vegetation, zooplankton, insect larvae, insects, fish eggs and occasionally minnows. In the fall, packing on pounds for leaner times becomes a priority. Some studies show fish eating up to 35% of their body weight weekly. As water temperatures begin to drop, fish tend to stay more active during daytime hours, not limiting anglers to first and last light.

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time on one of my favorite big bluegill haunts, by none other than legendary angler Dave Genz. When I picked him up at the dock, he was armed with his trusted Vexilar FLX-28, a pocket full of euro larvae and an assortment of his favorite ice jigs. As we made our way out into the basin, familiar lines began to show up on our flashers, reminiscent of being on the ice. Dave knew how to interpret these lines very well as it only took moments before he was tussling with his first bluegill.

Genz suggested anchoring in both the front and back of the boat to keep presentations vertical and visible on electronics. Too much boat sway would bring jigs outside the view of our electronics and leave us fishing blind. He showed me a new tungsten jig that will be available later this fall, called the Dropper. The heavy tungsten allowed him to use a small profile jig that stayed vertical and dropped quickly to feeding fish.

  Chad “Crappie Sniffer” Peterson, owner of HSM Outdoors, says fall is his favorite time of year to hunt big bluegills. The lakes he fishes around Alexandria, Minnesota, all have very different and distinct patterns. He relies heavily on the use of his electronics while searching out basin areas in close proximity to structure. Once fish are located, the trolling motor is deployed and used to hover over suspended schools of gills. He likes the freedom to be able to move and react quickly. He also advocates keeping log books that include information like date, water temperature, clarity of water and depth which he considers invaluable to patterning and locating fish on new bodies of water.

HSM Pro Staffer, Mike Raetz, also professes to catch his largest bluegills during fall, suspended over deep water. Mike often uses his ice rods to jig vertically over the side of the boat. He likes how shorter rods keep his jig inside the cone angle and visible on his Vexilar. “One big split shot, about a foot above my jig, is all I need to maintain depth control,” says Raetz. Mike employs a single anchor off the front of the boat once fish are located. This keeps him swaying and working different fish, picking off the most aggressive ones before moving to his next location.

Fall is a busy time indeed with hunting and family but if you do find some spare time don’t forget the often overshadowed bluegills. Finding large concentrations of big bluegills in predictable locations is a great reason to enjoy some of the last open water fishing of the year. Trust me when I say… you’ll be glad you did.

HSM Outdoors is a group of anglers from around the United States and Canada dedicated to making you more successful in the field and on the water. For more information on fall bluegills visit http://www.hsmoutdoors.com. 

Bluegills Secrets Reveled

Bluegills Secrets Reveled

By: Garett Svir

Photography: Kim Svir

It’s 5 am and you’re up brewing coffee. Lake map in hand you make last minute decisions before heading out to load gear. Mother Nature’s icy grip has taken hold as you head out to temperatures well below freezing. Armed with an assortment of jigs and plastics you make your way out into the frozen tundra. Big bluegills can do crazy things to a person. They can consume your thoughts. If this sounds like a normal weekend to you, then you just may have what it takes to ice a bluegill over 10” this winter. Big bluegills can be tough customers. The best eye sight in the business coupled with an uncanny way of tasting a bait before committing can make them very difficult at times. When it comes to winter bluegills it seems like 10 % of anglers are hooking 90% of the fish. So what are their secrets? I decided to pick the brains of two of the best in the business… Dave Genz and Dave Young.

Dave Genz is considered the founding father of modern ice fishing. The winter fishing system that he developed has forever changed the way that anglers ice fish. Instead of dragging a small house out onto the ice to stay comfortable, we can now stay out of the elements and remain mobile with the advent of his Fish Trap. His inventions were born out of necessity on his quest to catch more and bigger bluegills.

Genz fishes more by feel than by line watching. It is something that he refers to as cadence. “It’s just like fishing with a crank bait, you want the fish to feel it in their lateral line” says Genz.  He has learned to feel his jig pounding in the water. When he can no longer feel the jig pounding he sets the hook knowing that a fish has inhaled his offering. He prefers clear line in 2 pound test over the high visibility stuff. Genz expressed that sometimes a person has to cut the bluegills a little slack. He informed me that when the bite gets tough and you find yourself missing fish to briefly drop the rod tip and immediately set the hook. This is something that he learned by years of bobber fishing. “Sometimes you have to let them take it” explains Genz. When he started using Vexilar 25 years ago he used to write articles about how to catch sniffers, those picky fish that would not bite. He wrote about finesse presentations and dropper rigs. He has now changed his school of thought regarding this and opts to drill more holes and search out active bitters. “I want to make that first drop down a new hole” he explains. He firmly believes that those first drops down a new hole produce his biggest bluegills of the season. “At the end of the day that strategy will produce more fish” says Genz. You want to have the mindset that a small percentage of the fish in a particular body of water are bitters, and that it’s the anglers job to search out those bitters. When asked about structure he expressed that his favorite spots for bluegills are deep weed edges. He prefers to search these areas over deep basins because he can usually find less pressured fish. “Deep basin areas can be good early before the crowd develops” he explains. Once the crowds hit an area, it is beneficial to strike off to find less pressured fish.

You may remember Dave Young from the television reality series Ice Men that aired on the Versus Channel. Young is considered an authority on tight line fishing for finicky bluegills. Spending 35 years on the hard water, Young has also seen it all. He knows how to get it done in tough conditions. Young has spent countless hours showing others the art of tight lining. When he is teaching someone to tight line, he does not let his students use a flasher. He believes that this can be a distraction for anglers new to this style of fishing. “An angler must first learn to watch their line and detect subtle strikes” he explains. This also forces new anglers to fish the entire water column and they will often catch fish that come in quickly from outside the cone angle of the flasher. The amount of concentration that Young employs is unmatched. He jokes of bringing Advil with him on tournament day because he gets headaches from concentrating too much on his line. If you watch Young with a jigging rod it almost looks like he is jigging in a circle. When questioned Young stated, “A jigging style is like a finger print and is unique to every angler.” You can still believe that I am going to add circle jigging to my bag of tricks this winter. “I am watching my line as far down into the water as I can see it” tells Young. This allows him to see even the slightest irregularities in his jigging sequence. He’s watching the small kinks in his line that appear while jigging. If he notices the kinks in his line straighten out, he sets the hook. He is also looking for his line to go slack. This alerts him that a fish has grabbed his bait and swam up in the water column. His line of choice is 2 pound test Stren in high visibility yellow. He likes the way yellow shows up against snow and ice. He developed an ice rod for HT and pairs it with a small plastic reel called a Schoolie. On tournament day, 28 rigged rods will make it onto the ice. This allows Young to switch presentations quickly without taking the time to re-tie. Throughout the interview he stressed the importance of versatility. “Some times I work fish from the top down and other times I work them from the bottom up” he explained.

The play book is open. The best in the business have revealed tactics to help you ice more bluegills this winter. I hope that some of those bluegills make it back down the hole. I recently learned of an organization called Recycled Fish. They are encouraging anglers to release their largest bluegills to keep big fish genetics in our favorite lakes and ensure big fish in the future.  Become more than a sportsman, become a steward of our lakes and take the sportsman’s stewardship pledge at http://www.recycledfish.org.

Spring Sunfish

Great day on the water fishing bluegills! Caught one 10 1/2 inches, most 8-9 inches. Huge fish, awesome photos, great company! 

All images are property of Slab Seeker Fishing. 

If you are interested in stock images of fishing related content, please contact me at slabseekerfishing@hotmail.com 

Kim

Finding Big Panfish

I spent my night doing some research on the Department of Natural Resources Lake Finder site. If your a panfish aficionado like myself this site should be on your favorites list. Not to let out all the secrets but this site opens the book on all surveys for your favorite area lakes. It makes it easy to find lakes that have a higher density of large panfish. It also shows the number of fish that were caught in the survey, and the exact amount in the different size ranges. I live in Minnesota where the DNR also offers a mobile app. I'm sure most states have this available in some capacity. The one problem that I find is some of the test netting and electro-fishing was done many years ago, so the information is not always current. It does however still give you a starting point. So to test the site, I pulled up one of my favorite big bluegill lakes here in Central Minnesota. Reading thru the survey information I found that no bluegills were caught in this body of water by the DNR. This seemed strange to me so I made a call to our local fisheries office. The technician that answered the phone knew exactly which body of water I was referring to. He informed me that I was not crazy and big bluegills do exist in this body of water. He informed me that they had caught them in a different study where the results were not published. I also asked him what variable he believed was the most important to finding lakes with big bluegills in the area. I thought maybe freshwater shrimp as a food source, or current to aide in spawning. He informed me that a smaller population was key. If too much competition exists for food all the fish stay small and stunted. We also talked about the importance of letting the bigger males go. These big males will protect their spawning nests and not allow small fish to spawn, passing on the big fish genetics. He also informed me of a few lakes in the area where test studies uncovered  huge crappies.

My personal interest in fishing relates to the chase. Sometimes for me the act of hunting down big fish is much more satisfying than actually catching those fish. This is why I have no interest in driving out onto a lake and setting up in the middle of the community hot-spot. It is much more rewarding to strike out.

The last thing I believe in doing is trying to find a good map of the lake. Even at around a 150 acres, I am not going to be able to "drill out" the entire lake. I need something to give me some starting points. I encourage you to strike out from the pack this winter, and find some big panfish. You might just be rewarded. GT4YSBK72VHB




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