Features and behaviors of Bluegill

Bluegill Fishing Ultimate Guide shows that Bluegills have small mouths and oval-shaped, flattened bodies. Body coloration is highly variable with size, sex, spawning, watercolor, bottom type, and amount of coverage. In general, they are somewhat lavender and bronze with about six dark bars on their sides.

Males tend to have a copper-colored bar over the top of the head behind the eyes. Most of the year, the breast is silver to slightly blue, with some yellow or orange during the spawning season.

Females are generally lighter colored than males. Typically, the females have yellow on the throat while males have bright orange. Two distinctive characteristics are the prominent black spot on the rear edge of the gill cover and a black spot at the base of the posterior portion of the dorsal fin.

Bluegill Fishing Ultimate Guide Identifier

Bluegills are characterized by a small head and mouth and a hand- or pan-shaped body. The body is often an olive-green color with several broad, dark vertical bars on the side. The throat and belly are often yellowish or orange in color.

Diet:

Crustaceans, insects, and insect larvae are the dominant foods of bluegills, with fish eggs, vegetation, small fish, snails, and mollusks being of secondary importance. However, they may dominate their diet during certain times of the year. Overall, bluegill feed primarily on insects, both terrestrial and aquatic. They most actively feed at dawn and dusk when they retreat into the shallows. Bluegill feed primarily by sight.

Habitat:

The best places for anglers to look when bluegill fishing are spots with gradual shores, piers, pilings, inlets, holes, underwater structures, lily pads, weed beds, shoreline shallows, and bridges.

Angling:

The key to catching a bigger bluegill, especially during the non-spawning time, is to use the heaviest split shot you have to make the bait fall deeper faster past the smaller sunfish to the bigger bluegill that may be hanging near the bottom.

The best fishing spots to do this are near vegetation or structure, such as near a tree stump. During the spawning season, the larger bluegill are often the first to move toward the shallows.

Anglers can cast their fly rod, cane pole, or spin rod along the edges of a spawning colony to fish the outside of the bed for a possible reaction strike without disturbing the interior of the nest. Anglers fishing the spawn should quickly release the large males, identified by a longer ear tab and bright red and blue breeding colors.