What better way to spend a hot afternoon than fishing with the family and kids in a private pond that is loaded with big bluegills and bass. That is exactly what Wanda and I did yesterday afternoon with my brother in law, Leon and Wanda’s sister, Joan and their grand kids. We had a great time.

We were using artificial baits and 1/32 oz jig heads. Just about every color that we tried worked with Black and Electric Chicken being very hot colors. The ‘gills ate them up. We kept 28 to clean for Leon and Joan and the kids. We also released all the big gills instead of taking them out of the pond. Leon wants to have a pond with monster gills and so we only took out fish that were under 8.5″. The plastics that I used were Bobby Garland Itty Bitty Slab Slayers.

Sammie Jo, who will be in second grade next year caught the biggest gill all by herself yesterday on a 1.5″ plastic crawfish that I gave her and cast out in a little deeper water. I told her to watch her bobber closely and by the time that I looked around and picked up my rod, she was reeling in a huge 9.75″ Bluegill. Almost TARP size. This pond was stocked just over 3 years ago and gills already this big. We failed to catch a shellcracker and Leon said that he stocked them on a 4:1 ration with the Bluegills. Last summer, I caught a shellcracker there that was over 9″ long and we released it too. My biggest yesterday that is in the pic was 9.25″, so Sammie Jo beat me by 0.5″ for big fish honors. Grin.

Little 2 year old, Bentley, was kept busy carrying my gills from chair to the cooler. He put in a lot of steps. I had to teach him how to hold the fish without it getting away. He loves it and “Big” fish is all he talks about. My wife Wanda took most of the pics on her camera, but it must have a glitch because it won’t send the pics to my phone, so I only have a couple that we took with my camera to show all the fun that we had.

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