Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - July/August 2013 - 42

Deep Water

Bluegills
b B
y oat

by Vic Attardo

photos by the author

There I was, humming and singing a tune by B.B. King, and
the thing that put me in the mood for this was the dozen or
so fillet-ready bluegills captured in my cooler.
Though it was hot and sticky, I was feeling good about
the blues.
Summertime bluegill fishing is a whole other thing
from easy spring fishing and requires a change in location
and technique to get it right. Indeed, the bluegills already
in my collection weren’t spawn-time bluegills. And, they
certainly weren’t the bluegills lined-up in shallow water
with side-by-side nests. These were muggy-weather
bluegills holding in deeper waters. In this case, an 18-foot
deep flat accessible only by boat. And, that’s the first lesson
in catching summer bluegill, the need to get out of the
shallows and fish deeper water.
It’s important to know what bluegills are doing in this
season and weather. Chances are the oval panfish are
hanging in loose packs around thick cover. They’re probably
not traveling a great deal, though they’ll move around in
the morning and evening. Mostly, they’re waiting for food
to come to them. Fortunately, this makes bluegills highly
competitive and competitive bluegills are catchable bluegills.
But, it is mostly the smaller bluegills that will race to bait in
frantic groups. The bigger plates are slower to react, but when
they decide to eat the little guys, move away.
When I was visiting Conneaut Lake, Crawford County,
for a couple of days, I had the blues on my mind. I knew
Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania’s largest natural lake, is rich

42

Pennsylvania Angler & Boater • July/August 2013

with 8- and 9-inch bluegills, but the trouble is finding them.
Some anglers in another boat said they had searched the
shallow weedy shore that extends down from Conneaut
Lake’s ramp, but they did not find fish. I didn’t think they
would, not in the middle of a July day.
Instead, I took off across the lake and fished a flat I
suspected was the size of several football fields. On this flat,
the weeds pushed up at least 5 feet from the bottom, but
there were spaces between the stalks.
I went at the bluegills with a drop-shot rig and ice jigs,
a trick that had been taught to me years before by an
excellent Conneaut Lake angler and a veteran of Desert
Storm, Bryan Stuyvesant.
Since then, the best way I found to handle the placement
of bluegills around tall grass is to make short casts, just short
enough to get the baits away from the shadow of the boat.
Next, reel the dropshot weight until you feel it pulling away
from a weed or keep it where the weeds are slightly open.
Then, jiggle the rod tip to get the jigs moving. I use both
marabou tipped and soft-plastic adorned jigs.
Also, I learned that it doesn’t hurt to have the jig tipped
with a 1-inch long piece of nightcrawler.
With this technique, you’ll know pretty quickly
if bluegills are in the area and if you have the right
combination of offerings.
To catch large numbers of these mostly stationary fish, it’s
necessary to cover water. After pauses and twitches, which
hopefully garner some bluegills, I’ll move the rig a few feet. If
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