Anglers wake up to bluegill bedtime

June 2, 2009 by admin

Last year was my first trip to Kentucky Lake and it was centered around the Spring Crappie spawn. I have never caught so many fish in one trip. For that matter, I’ve never caught that many fish in a season. So, when my father threw out the idea of going back this Spring for the Bluegill and Red Ear spawn, I jumped on it. It was unlike any fishing trip I have been on. We weren’t on the water just before sunrise. We soon found out that we didn’t have to be.
The first day of fishing was the day we arrived and we didn’t get on the lake until after 5 p.m. We put the boat in and searched the cove for a good spot. We found our honey hole near some submerged bushes and started filling the cooler with fish. We were having luck with floating and deadlined red worms. The entire cove was only 6-8 feet deep and when we used a float, we were fishing in the 4-5 foot depth. There was four people in our two boat group, and by the end of that evening, we had enough fish to fill one cooler.

A day's catch on Kentucky Lake.

The next morning, we were on the water around 9:30 or so. We fished until lunch time when our coolers were completely full. We cleaned all the fish we had caught so far and made room for an afternoon of refilling them. While at the cleaning station we talked to some seasoned vets that showed us their massive red ear and let us know they were catching them on chucks of night crawlers. During lunch time a nasty storm rolled through, unfortunately while we were stuck on the dock, but that story is for the “Near Death Experiences” website. After the storm subsided and we ate, we were back at it around 2 p.m. May dad and I began to kill it. Just about every cast pulled up a slab bluegill or red ear. We were laughing, because it was that unbelievable. We weren’t even able to get more than one line wet. I felt like I was doing something wrong, like stealing money from somebody. We filled our cooler in what seemed like an hour. We went over to our friend’s boat and emptied our cooler into one of theirs. We then proceeded to fill it once more before we went in. We were dumbfounded. We were throwing back smaller fish that we normally would keep closer to home. The night crawler tip paid off.
That evening, a cold front moved in threw off the fishing for the last day of our trip. I will never forget the sight of the cleaning table being completely full with panfish and the electric filet knife saved us about five hours of cleaning. We ended up bringing home over 250 panfish and 5 or 6 catfish.

By kentuckyfishing.com contributor Jacob Knight

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