Greetings from the frozen North: near Ottawa, present temp. about 100 degrees F.
I have been skulking about here for over a year, enjoying the various columns, and finally have to ask a question.
Our pan fish here run in the 6-7 inch range for the average bluegill, and about 8-12 inches for crappie.
How far South does one have to drive to get into the biggies described in Richard Zieger’s columns, and those of Roger Stouffe?
We have non stop action here regarding panners, but no size to speak of. Next to bass (also pretty abundant), they are my favourite quarry, and good eating as well.
I dunno about Ontario, but I grew up in Northern Vermont and found all fish regardless of species to be about the same sizes and variation of sizes as I find here in Northern New Jersey.
When I’m looking for the larger panfish in a pond, I usually switch to a woolly bugger in the #10 to #6 range and fish in the deeper spots that are still pretty close to the shore line. I’ve also been astounded a couple of times when I see the size of some of the spawning fish in the spring.
I just got back from the “frozen” north. I was fishing a lake about an 1 1/2 above North Bay. Water temps during the week never got below 75 F and ranged into the low 80’s in some spots. Large panfish. Here in SE PA the bluegill/sunfish that I catch average between 5 and 8 inches. We do have some lakes that are managed as trophy panfish lakes, and I’ve caught bluegills out of them that measured 10 inches long and 7 inches from dorsal fin to belly. Before heading to the more northern areas of Ontario for my week a fishing, I fished the Rideau Lakes area north of Kingston and caught some pretty decent crappie and panfish. In the states, I think you’d have to go south, Kentucky,Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, to get where you would get consistently large panfish and crappie.
Reelfoot Lake in NW Tennessee used to be a top crappie and bream lake. Might be worth checking out. Kentucky Lake is another spot.
Rock Bass are the only panfish that seem to get bigger the further north you go. Here they seem to average about 4-7 inches. I’ve caught them in Vermont(south-central)and in Ontario as big as 12 inches.
As already mentioned, if the water is warm fish deeper. Also, fish larger. I normally fish a size 6 Sneaky Pete, on top, and use small bait fish patterns 3 to 3 1/2 inches to catch the larger bluegills and sunnies
Just another thought on this. The problem could be simply over population of your pan fish. If they aren’t targeted and removed and have limited predation they will quickly out do their food supply and remain small.
Since I have never been to your part of the world, I could be and probably am, 100% wrong. Like I said just a thought.
Michael (Wooly) Woolum
State Certified Hunter Education Instructor
Hickory, MS
Welcome to FAOL. Glad you finally took us up on our offer of coffee and a chair by the fireplace. Hopefully there won’t be need of a fire in it for a while.
Come on down to Massachusetts. I have caught some nice 3 to 4 lb Bass this year and they and their friends are still looking for some action. I hear there are LMB up to 7 lbers there but I have not caught one yet.
A trip to the Southern U.S. is in the works, but not for this year.
In the meantime, going to have to learn to love the small fish. Could be a whole lot worse…lol. At least there’s lots of tiddlers to be caught.
As mentioned, if more people targeted the pan fish, the ones remaining would probably grow larger. We definately have an over abundance.
The good news is that our Smallmouth population has really increased in the last few years in most lakes and rivers; the sizes remaining relatively large. They are some fun on a 5 wt.
Hope you can get up to Canada and “help” with the panfish cull…or I’ll just have to do it myself…lol.
Howdy and welcome. If you are looking at where to go in the southern USA then look at a few of Jim Hatch’s posts from over in the Carolinas. He gets into some big panfish on a regular basis and could send you some tips I am sure.
mudd, may I suggest(as I am a native Texan) that you check out Caddo Lake. Full of trees, and subsequently, crappie.
BIG crappie too.
Regarding overpopulation as was stated earlier, yes, this happens and it is usually the reason that you may catch mostly 5 or 6 inch sunfish.
I catch sunfish averaging 7 inches long, not much bigger than 8 or 9 inches, in a tiny pond formed by a little creek/ravine that floods out every time it rains.
It is very overpopulated, and as a result the big fish are few and far between. I still enjoy it, but there are a lot of tiny panfish.
I’ve been planning for some time, as I am the only one fishing this pond really, to cull out the smaller fish to try and develop a population of bigger fish for next summer.
Like I said just a thought.
