Panfish forums?

[volzfan59]

Does anyone know of, or can recommend some panfish forums? I asked Glenn before posting this and he told me about crappie.com and crappiecentral.com. My interest lies more with big bluegill fishing. 

Thank you 

[OmegaDPW]

crappie.com talks a lot about bluegill. I'm over there occasionally. The other I don't know about.

[greentrout]

More than a few panfish threads @texasfishingforum.com. 

Good Fishing 

[volzfan59]

Thanks to everyone that responded. I've joined crappie.com and the Texas Fishing Forum. 

 

Steve 

[CoryRobertLowe]

@volzfan59, honest question...I'm trying to understand panfishing better.

 

Is there a community out there, that does more "sportsfishing", meaning they pursue them with lures (casting to them), vs just using live bait? It seems to me the fun part would be using soft plastic jigs and casting, vs putting a minnow on a jig and a bobber.

 

I would like to get more into pan fishing (I have my rods set up), and I would like more the sportsman's perspective, vs trying to catch a lot on live bait, to take them home and fry them up.

To clarify, the way I learned (along with most) to fish, is what I said above (bobber and worm/live bait). It's a great way to be introduced to fishing. I plan to teach my future children the ropes this way. I think it's a great starting point, like "training wheels".  I know that people will disagree with me, but that's my perspective, having a sportsman's view of it.

[VolFan]

There are definitely more than a few people that hunt big panfish with lures and or flies, they just don’t talk about it much, and there’s not many big bluegill or shell cracker tourneys like there are for bass, crappie, catfish, and even walleye. It is every bit as hard to catch a true trophy panfish with or without live bait as it is to catch a trophy largemouth. But live baiting or jigging big panfish is much different than chunk and dunk bobber fishing. You really are looking for seasonal big fish spots just like with largemouth.

[JustJames]

If you wanna learn more about panfish both bluegill and crappies, crappie.com is forum that you can get a lot of knowledge at. A lot of them fish for fun and even more fish for fun and food.  Majority of them use plastic, hair jig or lures to catch them, less than 10% from what I see using live bait. 
There are also tons more info about gears, rods reels, Ultra light, Super Ultralight, JDM etc that bass fishermen might not even know of.

Most panfish are prolific fish meaning they lay a lot more eggs than others, to keep them as food is not so bad if ones follow the rule and limit.

[volzfan59]

2 hours ago, CoryRobertLowe said:

@volzfan59, honest question...I'm trying to understand panfishing better.

 

Is there a community out there, that does more "sportsfishing", meaning they pursue them with lures (casting to them), vs just using live bait? It seems to me the fun part would be using soft plastic jigs and casting, vs putting a minnow on a jig and a bobber.

 

I would like to get more into pan fishing (I have my rods set up), and I would like more the sportsman's perspective, vs trying to catch a lot on live bait, to take them home and fry them up.

To clarify, the way I learned (along with most) to fish, is what I said above (bobber and worm/live bait). It's a great way to be introduced to fishing. I plan to teach my future children the ropes this way. I think it's a great starting point, like "training wheels".  I know that people will disagree with me, but that's my perspective, having a sportsman's view of it.

@CoryRobertLowe, That’s a great question and to be honest, I don’t have an answer for you. I enjoy sinking a cricket under a cork from time to time, but I also prefer to take the sportsman route. I’ve got a ton of ultralight to light tackle, rods and reels. 

 

All of the above listed websites are good with some good information, but not exactly what I’m looking for. I still check them out fairly often. Even though I’m in SE Arkansas, I’ve found the Texas Fishing Forum to be pretty informative. If I had the knowledge, I’d like to replicate BR, but gear it toward big bluegill/ panfish fishing. Hey @Glenn, you got time to start “Big Bluegill/ Panfish Resources”?

[Team9nine]

Bigbluegill.com is still around. It is mostly archived forums from its heydays, but there are some newer posts. Lots of great archived material though to search through.

 

If you’re looking for lure fishing bluegills, search online for jigging spoons and bluegills. It was a big deal back in the day, and lots of detailed info should still be out there. 

[CoryRobertLowe]

@Team9nine, at one point, I created an account here, but I think they needed to verify it, and it was never verified. Then I found out that they have a facebook page, with the same name, so it appears everyone went there. I had reached out to the owner of that page, and I was never accepted, so I wonder if they just stopped managing it.

 

[Team9nine]

31 minutes ago, CoryRobertLowe said:

@Team9nine, at one point, I created an account here, but I think they needed to verify it, and it was never verified. Then I found out that they have a facebook page, with the same name, so it appears everyone went there. I had reached out to the owner of that page, and I was never accepted, so I wonder if they just stopped managing it.

 

Just looked - both sites are run by Bruce Condello. He is still active on the Facebook site as he made a post there just 2 days ago, so should be able to get into that one easily enough. Once you do, you might message him to see if you can still create an account and get access to the bigbluegill webpage. You might be able to search the archived forums without registering though, so check that option first. Lots of great older stuff that is still relevant.

[volzfan59]

I’ll check out Bigbluegill.com. I don’t do FB.

[Eric 26]

On 1/5/2025 at 3:54 PM, volzfan59 said:

I’ll check out Bigbluegill.com. I don’t do FB.

Same here😉

[Eric 26]

@CoryRobertLowe Much like yourself and at least a handful of us on here I enjoy using lures for panfish with my favorites being in no particular order a hair jig (vmc) being a favorite in 1/16th ounce, a road runner or other under spin  in both marabou and plain head with a gulp alive 1”-3” minnow as the body and a 1/16th ounce in line spinner. I much like @volzfan59 have a few different setups in both ultra light and light powers and have enjoyed personal messaging with him about some of our favorites. Although I don’t catch really big ones I do enjoy sharing and looking at the pictures on the “other species catch” on this site.

[CoryRobertLowe]

Where do you cast for them? Weeds? How about when the weeds are thick? I have fished a lot of aged lakes with a lot of weeds. I wonder if I should make a hole in the weeds a drop a jig in there (I saw that in a book).

 

I am still learning. I did bobber fishing as a child. Now I'm doing more casting lures. I just don't know how to target sunfish with lures, as they are slower to strike, and have such small mouths. I guess throwing a 1/16 oz jig by weed lines would do the trick. Last year, I was trying to target sunfish with small spoons. This kind of worked, but I found that worked better for crappies, which makes sense as a spoon is more like a minnow, and sunfish eat bugs, which more closely resembles a jig.

@Eric 26. I meant to tag you.

[Eric 26]

@CoryRobertLowe I fish a few retention ponds in my immediate area and one thing they all share in common is they are in neighborhoods which means the weeds are dense from the fertilizer runoff, also I fish from the shore so in my case it’s longer casts that I try to run parallel towards the weed edges if that makes sense. I am also going to try small spoons this season as we have a pretty good amount of crappie in the ponds but the bluegills dominate other than early spring and late summer/fall. As far as slower to strike I’ve not found that to be the case and usually the larger more dominant ones will strike first. I forgot to mention another favorite lure is a small rattle trap which if I can keep it out of the weeds the bluegills seem to really like it.

[BassinCNY]

I don't recommend it but a trick worm on a 3/0 ewg works.

[TLHSS]

I love fishing for big bluegill in our local retention ponds. I use a 2wt fiberglass fly rod and a click and pawl reel. It’s tons of fun, and a real inexpensive way to fish. 
 

My favorite fly pattern to use is the bully bluegill spider. 

[Eric 26]

I used to fish rubber legged foam spiders on spinning gear using the smallest clip on float I could find to get enough weight to cast them out.

[volzfan59]

12 hours ago, Eric 26 said:

I used to fish rubber legged foam spiders on spinning gear using the smallest clip on float I could find to get enough weight to cast them out.

I used to throw one of those on my old fly rod while chasing bluegills. It was a lot of fun and from time to time a largemouth would hit it. That was a whole lot of fun! Don’t remember what ever happened to my old fly rod and reel.

[Eric 26]

@volzfan59 One of these days I have to try fly fishing. One of my local tackle shops the owner used to have a class but I’m not sure if he still does 🤔 Either that or I’ll just have to visit @TnRiver46 if he’s still teaching down there 😃

[TnRiver46]

@Eric 26, it’s free for bears fans, you’ve been thru enough 

[Eric 26]

20 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

@Eric 26, it’s free for bears fans, you’ve been thru enough