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Does anyone know of different ways to catch bluegills that have turned off to biting? I have been catching a few gills all summer long up to about three weeks ago. Now I can't even get a single one to even take a nibble. The fish are there because I mark them on my fish finder. I could use all the help I can get.
Tonjohn
Well with the wind settling a bit I would try ice jigs with slips loaded with spikes or a big waxie...(firey colors work best for me, smaller the better.) If that doesn't get them to bite, try dynomite.
I have tried my ice jigs with no success. Thanks for the tip though.
teardrop and wax worm is what i use.
Hey Tomjohn,
When I was really young we used to ice fish a small bay off of a local lake for gills. Most of the bay was relatively shallow (less than 7 feet) with a deeper channel (11-14 feet) running through it. Lots of times we'd get fish in the shallower side either at sunrise or sunset. The best bet was to find a favorite weed clump and fish it.
During the day it was a completely different story. The fish moved back to the deep channel and everyone and their brother knew that's where they were, however no one could get them to hit. My good friend was the lucky guy that discovered how to get them activated. One day he was jigging for walleyes with a spoon on one rod and had his gill rod about a foot off of bottom in 13'. Whenever he would drop his spoon to the bottom, the spoon would stir just enough sediment to congregate and activate the gills. We ended up modifying the method to use a crappie rig with a decent weight. Don't know if this would do the trick for you but it sure made the difference for us.
We do this back here in s.e wi and n.e. il. Using a small black dry fly, as the dry fly gets water logged it sinks ever so slow and those gils and crappies just can't stay off them!! if you fish shallow than just use a dry fly under a small bobber(bobber is for casting), use with or with out spikes or waxies, but sometimes plain is the only thing that works for us too? if fishing deep than try a double rig, use a small jig on bottom and a fly on the top with a long tag line so it has room to drop(the deeper rig is sometimes hard to detect a hit, but with time you'll get it) the other way is to use small 1/8 or 1/4oz spoons with waxies, spikes or even plastics work great too, just cast them out and either count them down to where the fish are or if fish are on the bottom, than let it fall to the bottom and start to jig it, from a little shake to full blown jerk, the fish will tell ya what they want! Don't get stuck on shallow water spots, as we were catching most of our gils from 15ft to 35ft of water....hope this helps and let us know how this works for ya.
cosmo