Bluegill (also known as bream, brim, and copper nose) spawn from late spring to early summer. This is the time they gather in the shallows to lay their eggs. This is a great time to catch them since they are in more concentrated groups and are closer to shore. While you may not impress anyone with such a small fish, you can still have some fun.
To get the best fishing results, you need to find the spawning beds. Follow the tips in the video: Look for light spots on the bottom that look like “white dinner plates”. These are the spots where the bluegill clear the bottom to lay their eggs. Since bluegill are colony nesters, you should find at least 20-30 fish.
Wade Bourne recommends to use a regular bobber rig with bait or a drop shot rig with either bait or small soft plastics. While those rigs would probably work good, I would use a small white, yellow, or black marabou jig slightly twitched at the edge of the spawning beds. That should bring in bucket fulls of bluegill.
I hope you enjoyed these tips and good luck finding and catching those bluegill.
Every year I seem to get a case of the “bluegill flu” around this time of year that Wade talks of. Need to take a day or two off work and get my bluegill fix, you might say.
Work is always in the way, isn’t it. I need to make some kind of passive income so that I can fish more often and not worry about “payin the bills”.
Hi William K.
I appreciate your comment on my blog concerning the knotless leader. I too am a fan of the leader and have been using it for some time now. I used it the other day with some poppers and really liked the performance. I also used it with some dry flies and it worked really well. I like the fact I can have a numbers of the leaders already tied and ready to use when I get to the water. They are really handy. I enjoyed the video on your post about fishing for bluegill. I only wished he had mentioned fly fishing for the bluegills. I have done a number of posts on using the fly rod to catch some nice bluegills in our local lake. They are just going on the beds here in Alabama in the next couple of weeks and I will be there with my fly rod to enjoy the fun of landing some monster bulls. It is nice to be retired and go fishing anytime. I am living my dream. I would welcome you as one of my followers, if you are interested. I feel my blog might interest you since I cover warm water species as well as trout fishing. I would like to become one of your followers if you can give the link to sign up. Thanks again for the comment. Bill
This is the absolute worst time of the yr, nothing good is open, cant wait for the fourth saturday in june, BASS BABY!!!
Why wait till anything is “open”…. Just joking…. Wouldn’t want anyone to get into trouble like that.