Personal Best Bluegill

[Eskimo]

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Thanks all.

I don't know why that Bluegill looked so different. Maybe it was stocked and it came from a different gene pool then the native sunfish.

I'm kicking myself for not taking a better picture of it next to a ruler before releasing it. Oh well. I can't do anything about it now.

I like the delicate flavor of sunfish fillets. There's isn't much meat on an individual fish, so gathering enough fillets for a meal is a bit of a time investment.

I even spent $55 on a Panhandler fish filleting gizmo. It allows you to quickly fillet out sunfish and leave relatively little meat on the carcass. We'll see how long this thing lasts. Here's a video about the 'Panhandler' from someone I assume is the inventor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnGfkfAhNIY

Here is a pic of my Panhandler:

[Lard Almighty]

That's a 'gill to be proud of! Congrats!

My brother and I used to fish the Watergate ponds quite a bit when we lived closer. We always did pretty well there on the bass and pickerel. Even though the ponds get a lot of pressure, most people are using worms under fist-sized bobbers. Unweighted tubes and soft jerkbaits were usually the ticket. In the summer when they got really weedy, dragging a frog across the tops of weeds yielded some awesome strikes.

[buzzbaiter]

Some of these look more like yours than the 'typical" Jersey 'Gil:

First two are male bluegills; 3rd one is a Pumpkinseed(a massive one at that - look at that width!)and the last one is female Bluegill. All over 9" and plump. These were caught in a Hunterdon Cty park pond June '12.

[briansnat]

That has to be the biggest bluegill I ever saw. When I was a kid we'd go to our lake house in Sussex County and the bluegills by the dock were like flies. If you threw a piece of hot dog roll in the water it was gone in seconds, they were like a swarm of piranha. They hit everything. I liked catching them on bare hooks with no bait.

We could catch bucket fulls, literally. If you didn't get bored after 15 minutes you could easily catch 100 or more in an afternoon. Some were pretty big, but none as big as the one you caught.

[zhitoman]

How many different species of sunfish we have in New Jersey? I personally caught bluegills, rock bass, green sunfish, pumpkinseed, red breasted sunfish and a few smaller ones that I couldn't identify.

[gwl2oneida]

I love those lil fish on UL gear or a school of crappie. Tons of fun, nice fish.

[NorthJerzyG]

Nice gill, congrats on the pb!! Looks really tasty with an ice cold Yeung!! Good stuff.....

[FASTEDDIE29]

Beautiful Gills guys. Panfish are the most sought after fish in the country for those that don't know. I love em!!! Great catches!!!

I will be sticking some river monster hooks in the backs of those Gills come summer time.