Redear, Pumpkinseed, Bluegill oh my!

[nvthis]

Soooo freakin hot here this weekend.. Hit the 90s the last three days.. Mom passed on her visitation so I had the kid with me all weekend.. We hit some local ponds and just tore it up.. She's a spaz when it comes to fishing, but typical girl :ignore: She don't want nothing to do with touching any worms or fish... Man, she's got the fever though.. We got burnt to a crisp in the sun and she still wouldn't give up.. The title says it all.. There were some green sunfish mixed in there, some crappie and a couple small LMB, but mostly just the three.. Sorry fellas, no pics this weekend.. Next time I will take some for MP, sans my kid

Well, she LOVES to eat fish.. I don't like to give her much as the Cali consumption guidlines for wild caught fish isn't very confidence lifting.. But when we do it, we do it right.. Fish fry for dinner tomorrow night! These weren't big by monster sunfish standards.. But I told her I wouldn't keep or clean anything smaller than my hand, and that's where we sit Out of the entire weekend, only 9 met the criteria. Just enough for dinner With the exception of the crappie I don't think we got any sunfish over a pound this time around.. But, we still have all summer!

Anyone else make it out this weekend?

 

[Hick]

got a grandkid out for a lil adventure Saturday... no ffishin' tho'

 

[YYZ Skinhead]

By sunfish you mean these:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrarchidae


as opposed to this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mola_mola (see attached pic)

I think?

 

[nvthis]

Heh heh.. yeah, I don't think my 7 year old is ready to reel in anything called a Mola Mola yet.

As a fresh, green beginner I think we'll stick with the regular sunfishes

Dinner was AWESOME! I had mine with tarter sauce, and Sierra Nevada Summerfest

 

[Irish]

excellent man! its actually still too cool here for the gills to start bedding. when they do, i use a cane pole and pluck them right out of there. its all i fish for these days. my baby girl turns 27 next week. we still go fishing togeather few times a year...

my local bait shop thats been here close to fifty years burned down a few weeks back. heck, half the town burned down! its where i've gotten my fishing/hunting licences for many years...

 

[SPEARCHUCKER]

Thats a pretty fish NV. Never caught a freshwater fish that colorful before.
Thinking about going out this weekend and try to troll for some rock.
Got a few crab pots. Going to put a couple out from the dock, and a couple down the creek tomorrow. Hopefully I can get a meals worth by Friday.

 

[YYZ Skinhead]

Mmmmm...deep-fried fish in batter...Now I am craving fish and chips and a frosty glass of bitter/IPA...

I had no idea that largemouth bass, bluegill et cetera were part of one family. Apparently all of the species are tasty.

 

[nvthis]

Irish~ Dude, that blows about your tackle shop The smaller and average gills here have been shallow and active for prespawn for a couple weeks. The bulls haven't quite come up from the deep yet. Pretty sure they will be in transition in the next few weeks to the next month and a half, depending on elevation. That's when things get fun, if you can find the bigger beds. Once they leave the beds though, it can take a while to get them back in the groove again. The lakes here are deep, so the bulls are a real challange anytime. Normally I will just find something else to look after, but since the little one will be with me, we'll be looking for dinner plates Of course with the redear, crappie and a few bass around, we won't have to settle for small.. That's hella cool that your chilluns still come 'round to spend time with their pops

Spearchucker~ Lucky bum! Where abouts are you? (I know you have said before, but can't remember..) Nothing like crab fresh out of the drink.. Reminds me of cloudy afternoons on the beach in Oregon. Cooking our crabs fresh out of the pots.. Nothing like it at all.. The closest thing we have here are crawfish.. They are easy enough to get, but jeeze they are small..

YYZ~ Yup! Haven't had one yet I didn't like The catfish will be cruising the shallower coves soon.. We get smaller ones mostly, 2 to 4 lbs, and they say that those are best for eating.. But we can usually pop a 10lber per trip and they are just as good IMO.

 

[SPEARCHUCKER]

Im at DC off the Potomac. 60% of the nations blue crabs are caught from the Potomac and ChesBay.
Just up from South Carolina for the winter. Was getting some nice crawfish down there.

 

[nvthis]

When the gills start hittin' 10'' and better, life is good

10'' trout and 10'' bass don't really impress anyone.. But, pound for pound, fighting a 10''+ bull gill is like reeling in a garbage can lid with a bad attitude.. Not that you could tell just by looking at one, but these things are freaking insane. For every bit of that 10'' length, they match it in depth as well..

We took half a dozen big bulls and a 3lb spotted bass today. That bass will be our May dinner. Due to california consumption rec's, we only eat bass about once a month... Even though I grew up often eating the same fish, it's a little different when you are feeding it to somebody else...

 

[nvthis]

Happen to see these fly by the moon just before dark.. Seemed really odd to me. What do you suppose they were up to? In-flight refueling maybe? They were pretty high. The two shots here were with my camera zoomed in full. The larger shot I did with Nero when I got home..

 

[Irish]

last time i seen two planes that close, i was on the pier in gulfport ms (seabee's), throwing a cast net, and watched an f15 forcing another plane to land, and bales of weed were being tossed out into the gulf of mexico...late 70's...

looks like a refuel though to me too...

thats a nice sized gill bro. i hate picking bones, so i fillet all of mine...i showed this pic before, but it was a good two and a half hour fish one afternoon across the street from me...lotta lakes here near me...all great for pan fish...

have fun with you're girl bro. they grow up super fast...

 

[YYZ Skinhead]

Sheesh, now I wanna go fishing, though I haven't gone in around three decades.

 

[nvthis]

I think that called a mess.. As in "That there's a whole mess o' gills" lol, that's some work right there.. To get a haul like that here would represent throwing back quite a few smaller ones...

Went crappie fishing yesterday, but the weather was a little wild this week and the bite just wasn't there.. Did hook into a 3lb spot and a few medium sixed gills.

Damn Irish, all we need now is a 5gal bucket of crawfish, some Hoosier joints, and a case of Summerfest