La Crosse Area Panfishing – September 8

I don’t know if it’s the many mornings of fog, or the more fall like temps, or the low water showing more snags, but, fishing has definitely picked up for me this past week. My usual fall deep water snags are starting to produce nice big crappie(about12-16 per trip), and I’m catching bigger bluegill on the river snags. Mind you, I’m also throwing back bunches of small gill but, I’m getting my limit and with school back in, the fishing pressure is much lower which is always nice. I’d rather spend the day with the bald eagles, other assorted wildlife and the sound of crickets everywhere, than with the jet skis and waves from big boats. For the bluegill, I’ve put away the plastics and went back to leaf worms… they simply give you more action, period. For the crappie though, I still prefer hair jigs…my favorite color as of late – pure green, head and body. I wish I could show you pictures but my digital camera died and I can’t afford a new one right now, sorry…hopefully soon. Anyway, I just wanted to say that it’s a good time to get out, things should continue to get even better(especially bigger numbers of schooling crappie)as fall begins. Enjoy! Bob

Way to go Bob,
That was a great read with very good information.
Glad to see you are on some quality panfish

I agree Bob. Things are really picking up out there on pool 8. We experienced much of the same things you report only difference is orange was the color w/chunk of night crawler for me with gills and pink w/minnow for the crappies. The crappies didn’t seem to wander much from the snags either. You have to be right in them with your bait. I tried a pink/white hair jig and it didn’t produce quite as well as just a small pink jig. There sure are some nice size gills and crappies hitting this fall.

Hi Mikehd,
Just a question if you see this….When you are using the orange jighead with a piece of crawler, do you get more consistently bigger bluegill or are you throwing back many small ones as I am with just a hook and worm? I’m asking just wondering if anyone knows if their is a way to attract more bigger gill consistently if there is such a thing. Thanks. Bob

I don’t think it is a matter of attracting them. I think it is a matter of getting the bait past all of the smaller gills first. No if you find a pod of all 10”-12″….Well that solve the problem pretty fast.

FDR

Mike and I have found by using a jig head you will still catch some smaller gills but the hook normally isn’t down there throats. The number of small fish falls of some but when they are on the feed the little ones are still aggressive towards the jigs.
Hope that helps some.

Thanks everyone for your comments. Today I went out chasing the gills one last time before my yearly company comes in for a week of bass fishing. What I found today was truely interesting. I was finding the same situations that I had been finding = one keeper to 10 small ones when I found one spot that changed that around in a big way. I caught 15 big gills, all between one-half and 3 quarter pound beauties along with a few crappie and two smallies. Did this in an hours time and NO small fish. Why, I do not know unless bigger fish in some instances hang together and maybe chase small ones away or predators do that? Anyway, it was a super fun last panfish day before the casting begins. I loved it-super fun. Their is nothing like bluegill that you cannot horse out of the water and I’m very much looking forward to checking this spot out again in a week or so to see if this interesting trend applies again. You guys have fun fishing, Bob