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Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009 - 9:00 p.m.
If you've been here on a regular basis, you know I posted a similar photo here before a few years back. Catching the first nice mess of late winter bluegills is something worth celebrating, none the less. If you have ever tasted bluegill, you might understand why I pursue these sweet-fleshed fish so often. Yes, bluegills are the first fish that most people catch in their lives here in North America. They are plentiful, and smaller ones are really easy to catch. Perfect fish to introduce children to the pastime of sport fishing. To me, the challenge is to find bigger fish, in a large enough quantity to make it worth getting the cutting board and 4" fillet knife out of storage. In the winter months, I can usually bring home a couple of meals worth of smaller bluegills from B.A.C.E Lake, the power plant lake I spend summer days chasing channel catfish. I have done just that twice in the last couple of weeks. Not much skill needed for this- just the ability to withstand face numbing winds. Last Saturday, I kept having to stick the tip of my ultralight rod into the heated lake to melt the ice that kept clogging my guides, freezing the line in place where I couldn't properly cast my line. The 4" knife is really important for these smaller fish- when properly battered and deep fried, the finished fillets resemble irregularly shaped fish stick from your grocer's freezer case. Only MUCH tastier. When the ice finally melts one of the creek that feeds Lake Mohall (which it did over the past 10 days or so), the fun really starts for me. I went down tonight after I left work and ran the dogs, spent almost 60 minutes with a cold wind pushing light rain into the back of my clothing, and was rewarded for my efforts with a mess of 19 nice, big bluegills, along with another 20 or so I returned to the water, plus 5 decent (but illegally sized- so they went back in the creek too) crappies. All this in conditions that most people wouldn't consider good fishing weather. Here's what I have figured out about late winter bluegill fishing here locally- pick the days when the weather is about to take a turn for the worst. Falling barometric pressure increases the odds of success greatly. A light rain falling increases the chances you will get into nice fish. Try to get to the creeks before heavy rainfall raises the water level too much, fouling the water. And be prepared to be the only person fishing in these conditions. It seems to work for me, anyway...
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