# How fast do Bluegills grow



## SR-Mechead

kumma said:


> The gill is in a 20 gallon tank now so that must be holding him back. I have a 13" catfish in the 50 gallon tank, he'll go outside soon so I can maybe move the gill.
> 
> I cant compare a tank to a pond, the only pond im familiar with had rainbows in it. I just though it was interesting that the gill hasent grown in lenght.



It's very interesting how many of you have tanks. I can remember when a guy on the lake had a horse watering tank and he had a few fish in it. In the winter if the fish were moving around we would go fishing and 90% of the time we would get fish. If the fish were not moving we would sit around and have a few pops:lol:


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## ifish4eyes

It's very interesting that more peoople fish for panfish than any other species, but I never hear of anything being done for the panfish fisherman. I realize there have been changes to daily creel limits, But this usually a reactionary change because of decressed catches. I would like to see some proactive action to make inland lakes to produce trophy size panfish. Does anyone have info on what if anything is being done to promote trophy panfish fisheries?


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## Westlakedrive

I think the only way to get a trophy panfish lake is make it C&R or or very strict limits. Other wise doesnt take long for word to get out and limits are pretty high so if the fish are biting doesnt take much for a few guys to take a fair amount of fish.


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## SR-Mechead

Westlakedrive said:


> I think the only way to get a trophy panfish lake is make it C&R or or very strict limits. Other wise doesnt take long for word to get out and limits are pretty high so if the fish are biting doesnt take much for a few guys to take a fair amount of fish.


 I agree 100% .I would like to see them close gill season while they are on the beds. Give them a change instead of pulling the big males and the females off the beds. I know my lake is only 40 acres but it has great structure lots of weeds and it use to be used for logging many years ago so it could be a really good gill lake. It is fished heavy by people who keep everything . I think they would eat minnows out of a bucket if you would let them.:sad:


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## RichP

Yeah, a few years ago there were new regulations put in place for the lake across the street from me:10 panfish per day, 1 northern, and 1 sm/lm bass. There has since been a noticeable increase in larger panfish...


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## ifish4eyes

Alot of lakes could use some different regs. I caught some pretty good size sunfish while trolling a carwler harness on the outside of weed edges.


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## QuickStrike

I'm not sure if you've had your original question answered or not, but I was once shown a quick chart by one of our fisheries regional managers. According to his sources, the average age for a 10-inch bluegill in Michigan was ten years old.

Now that's the average. Some bodies of water grow fish faster, some slower. But I'd bet my last buck that very few gills make it to 7-years old before getting picked off by guys like me looking for supper.


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## SR-Mechead

QuickStrike said:


> I'm not sure if you've had your original question answered or not, but I was once shown a quick chart by one of our fisheries regional managers. According to his sources, the average age for a 10-inch bluegill in Michigan was ten years old.
> 
> Now that's the average. Some bodies of water grow fish faster, some slower. But I'd bet my last buck that very few gills make it to 7-years old before getting picked off by guys like me looking for supper.



Thank you and I bet your right but I wish they would let them get 3 yrs old in my lake.
Bob


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## ReddHead

I disagree with people saying that you can over fish a lake for gills. I believe that it can happen in a small pond because you can fish every spot that the fish can hide. The following are my reasons there are big gills in lakes but you don't catch them.
The bigger bull gills will bed in deep water 6-15ft. Often times these fish are missed for the easier pickings in 1-4 fow. 
Big gills will bed year around typically around the full moon and the beds in very deep water. Also the beds will be scattered and very few fish in the area. 
I use to fish a pond on the corner of chapel and king road in Jackson County. The owner required that every gill be kept, even the very small gills. The would record the catch, date, time, bait used and area fished. He recorded 20,000-30,000 gills kept each year. You would swear there were no fish over 4" but if you happened to find the big ones there were there and nice 8-9" gills. 
I have fished a lake with our lake house on it my entire life. I have caught huge gills in the spring and summer, so do many other people. The population is not effected. In the winter I have fished it on many occasions and you would swear there are no gills in the lake at all. 
I have fished a lake that was said to be fished out of redears. After doing my home work through time and learning the lake I found the redears bedding on breaks, in the weeds and down 4-6 feet. They could not be seen and only by using finess techniques did I catch them. All were returned to the lake. 
I believe there are big gills in all lakes. Just lake large sport fish it takes time to learn a lake and how the big guys are using the lake.


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## SR-Mechead

ReddHead said:


> I disagree with people saying that you can over fish a lake for gills. I believe that it can happen in a small pond because you can fish every spot that the fish can hide. The following are my reasons there are big gills in lakes but you don't catch them.
> The bigger bull gills will bed in deep water 6-15ft. Often times these fish are missed for the easier pickings in 1-4 fow.
> Big gills will bed year around typically around the full moon and the beds in very deep water. Also the beds will be scattered and very few fish in the area.
> I use to fish a pond on the corner of chapel and king road in Jackson County. The owner required that every gill be kept, even the very small gills. The would record the catch, date, time, bait used and area fished. He recorded 20,000-30,000 gills kept each year. You would swear there were no fish over 4" but if you happened to find the big ones there were there and nice 8-9" gills.
> I have fished a lake with our lake house on it my entire life. I have caught huge gills in the spring and summer, so do many other people. The population is not effected. In the winter I have fished it on many occasions and you would swear there are no gills in the lake at all.
> I have fished a lake that was said to be fished out of redears. After doing my home work through time and learning the lake I found the redears bedding on breaks, in the weeds and down 4-6 feet. They could not be seen and only by using finess techniques did I catch them. All were returned to the lake.
> I believe there are big gills in all lakes. Just lake large sport fish it takes time to learn a lake and how the big guys are using the lake.


 I can only hope that you are right. I have fishing this lake since 1972 and so has a lot of other guys and we all say where in the hell did the the fish go.
I use to catch very nice gills and I mean very nice,but this winter has been terrible. I can go to other lakes and catch fish,but this one has got me confussed.


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## QuickStrike

ReddHead said:


> I disagree with people saying that you can over fish a lake for gills. I believe that it can happen in a small pond because you can fish every spot that the fish can hide. The following are my reasons there are big gills in lakes but you don't catch them.
> The bigger bull gills will bed in deep water 6-15ft. Often times these fish are missed for the easier pickings in 1-4 fow.
> Big gills will bed year around typically around the full moon and the beds in very deep water. Also the beds will be scattered and very few fish in the area.
> I use to fish a pond on the corner of chapel and king road in Jackson County. The owner required that every gill be kept, even the very small gills. The would record the catch, date, time, bait used and area fished. He recorded 20,000-30,000 gills kept each year. You would swear there were no fish over 4" but if you happened to find the big ones there were there and nice 8-9" gills.
> I have fished a lake with our lake house on it my entire life. I have caught huge gills in the spring and summer, so do many other people. The population is not effected. In the winter I have fished it on many occasions and you would swear there are no gills in the lake at all.
> I have fished a lake that was said to be fished out of redears. After doing my home work through time and learning the lake I found the redears bedding on breaks, in the weeds and down 4-6 feet. They could not be seen and only by using finess techniques did I catch them. All were returned to the lake.
> I believe there are big gills in all lakes. Just lake large sport fish it takes time to learn a lake and how the big guys are using the lake.


I would agree with you on most of this. My researcher friend once told me that it was impossible to deplete a bluegill population from a good lake. I remember asking him if it was good management to release the larger gills and keep the 7-8 inch fish for supper. He said keep them all, with the belief that centrarchid species are so prolific that the smaller ones will grow faster and get big quick enough to keep the size structure balanced.

But recent information leads me to believe this might not be true. Take Houghton Lake as a recent example. For years, HL was a top bluegill destination for panfish anglers. I remember spending summer weekends there in the early '80s and it was nothing to catch a meal of fine gills with a mix of giant (occasional 13-inch) rock bass and a few smallmouth mixed in. A few years back, the Lake Association pressured the DNR to allow weed treatments in the lake to make the recreational boaters happy.

The treatment was frighteningly effective, and what was once 22,000 acres of diverse, fish hiding habitat, became a moonscape. Anglers had a heyday. I heard from a government official that greedy anglers were hitting the gills on their beds night and day, some especially capitalistic guys taking over 100 fish in a 24 hour period. This happened with all species.

Today, Houghton Lake remains a moonscape. I took two good friends to Houghton Lake in February 2006 to see if we could scratch up a meal of those big HL gills. We fish bluegills pretty hard throughout the hardwater season, and working as a team have a pretty good system of finding the fish. Jackson county lakes get a good deal of our attention. In three days of hard looking, we caught 1 bluegill, a whopping 5-incher.

Now I know that someone will post that they slayed the fish all last year just 5 minutes after this lands on the web, but I have another friend who has a business in HS and lives on the lake. He also tournament fishes for panfish in the big Genz affairs. By accounts, he's a good fisherman because he puts his time in. He told me that in 2006, just a short time after the Lake Association treated that system, the fishery had been destroyed. He said that he could go out to his favorite cabbage spots, drill 20 holes in the best areas, put the camera down, and see not one decent bluegill.

That's pretty damning evidence of the effects of man. Whether you blame it on angler over-harvest, or treatment destroying whole year classes of fish does not matter. Man put the hurt on our largest inland lake which was once teeming with good fish.

So can anglers affect a bluegill fishery? I guess you could argue either way. I would suggest moderation in both size and creel numbers. The fish have too much going against them in today's technological world for anglers to not be stewards of the resource.


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## Fecus

On some fishing show before work this morning they had a show about a farm pond.

The owner had fry stocked and they were slabs in a year.


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## ifish4eyes

I can't believe that houghton lake gill numbers are down, if they are down it was in the cycle of going down anyway before the weed kill off. I can believe catch rates might be down, but that doesn't equate to fish numbers are down. Fisherman are notorious creatures of habit, ( well I caught fish in this spot for twenty years and since they killed the weeds, it killed all the gills ). How about they killed the weeds and the fished moved to a different location for security and food opportunities. One thing I've experinced personally and from others, that since the weed kill off is that predator fish catch rates are doing well, this would be to the advantage of panfish. Just my .02


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## garyb

SR-Mechead said:


> I agree 100% .I would like to see them close gill season while they are on the beds. Give them a change instead of pulling the big males and the females off the beds. I know my lake is only 40 acres but it has great structure lots of weeds and it use to be used for logging many years ago so it could be a really good gill lake. It is fished heavy by people who keep everything . I think they would eat minnows out of a bucket if you would let them.:sad:


a lot of people can't catch the big ones unless their on their beds


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## Thirty pointer

SR-Mechead said:


> I agree 100% .I would like to see them close gill season while they are on the beds. Give them a change instead of pulling the big males and the females off the beds. I know my lake is only 40 acres but it has great structure lots of weeds and it use to be used for logging many years ago so it could be a really good gill lake. It is fished heavy by people who keep everything . I think they would eat minnows out of a bucket if you would let them.:sad:


Unfortunately that wouldn't leave much time to fish them in the warmer months .


https://www.noble.org/news/publications/ag-news-and-views/2009/june/bluegill/


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## sureshot006

Time flies...


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## bobberbill

After 13 years, they should be a little bigger!


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## sfw1960

Yup.
Paul's right, it takes 8-10 years typically for a ten inch gill.
I've read it and heard it from DNR fisheries also.
Start a new thread?
LOL


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## kzoofisher

In the 13 years since this thread started the evidence of panfish over fishing has started to pile up. Getting panfish fans to buy in is the problem. WI and MN are moving ahead with regs to produce more big 'gills; ten years to see widespread results, fifteen years for Michiganders to believe it and ten more years for it to start working. 2055 is going to have some great fishing.


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## Bob D

sfw1960 said:


> Yup.
> Paul's right, it takes 8-10 years typically for a ten inch gill.
> I've read it and heard it from DNR fisheries also.
> Start a new thread?
> LOL


Holy thread res, batman. It looks like it was resurrected for the purpose of trash talking. Not sure how long that new thread would last. LOL


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