It’s about that time of year when the sunfish are moving in shallow to spawn. I love this small period because you can fill your stringer with a good mix of them and also some straggling crappies. ‘Gills aren’t as finicky as Crapps, though. However, if you want to catch some Bulls, I’d highly recommend giving these rigging tactics below a try. You may just hook into a near state record like the recently caught pumpkinseed below. Word of caution before proceeding: just because ‘Gills are probably the most prominent in the lake doesn’t mean you need to decimate their population. If you want to have a fish fry, keep the intermediate sized ones (8 ½ – 9 inches) and let the Bulls (10+ inches) go make babies; better genes mean bigger fish in the future.
~ Save some money and go artificial. Most monster Bulls caught in the boat I’m fishing in are with 1/32 – 1/16 oz flu flus (in chartreuse or white) and beetlespins tipped with a white twister tail. Instead of tossing crawlers, waxies, leeches, or crappie minnows like every other boat around you is doing, give the fish something they haven’t seen.
~ Try flies for fly fishing. The bugs are beginning to hatch now. ‘Gills loooooove smacking the surface on an unsuspecting bug in a calm bay. They’re also curious as cats and are willing to go the distance to check out something slowly sinking.
~ Go low profile with a fly fishing strike indicator. Fish staging on 7 feet of water or less can spook quite easily. You don’t need a massive float/bobber to catch the big boys. There’s a reason why fly fishing can be so successful – it’s a delicate approach at putting a lure in front of a fish. You can do such by mimicking a fly fishing approach:
– Rig: Fix the strike indicator at the depth where you’d normally attach a float
–Retrieve: Upon the lure landing, pause, giving it a 3-5 second count and then quickly reel in 2-3 feet…repeat
*It’s a slow retrieve but adds enough movement for your lure to entice (remember, this is the pre-spawn…the big fish typically aren’t overly active).
–Hook set: The strike indicator will sit low to the water surface, so any odd sights of it going slightly to the side or down means, more than likely, there’s a fish on. Set it when you see that type of action and adjust to give it more time if they haven’t quite swallowed your lure.