Big Bluegill @ B A Steinhagen Lake

It's been almost a month since I've had a day off of work to go fishing. We'd been hearing some reports about this lake and thought we'd go check it out. We went to Martin Dies Jr State Park. Right away I could tell this was a great place for gills. I tried a few lures at first and was catching a lot of dink green carp aka:LMB HaHa! JK Then I switched to live bait and still got a few LMB but then I started dropping a float right next to the stumps and WHAM! the bluegill were slamming my rod tip down. Likely because of all of the bass, the bluegill are holding to close to cover. We must have caught over 100 and wore ourselves silly catching them..so much so that a light sprinkle or rain sent us running off dinner and margaritas. We caught a few in the 12" range but most were around 6" fat though like little footballs. When we tried bottom fishing we landed a bunch of fatty bullheads that looked well fed. Bait was your basic Canadian Crawlers on #10 EC cricket hooks and #10 EC Baitholders, weight Thill Floats and a Zebco 33 combo. It was a beautiful cloudy, cool day with very little sun. Can't wait for our next trip.

Beautiful fish.

>E

Awesome post and some solid fish. Good job Don!

Great post and some solid slabs. Good job.

Always wanted to fish that water but never knew where to start out...appreciate your pictures. That looks like some greenie action in the next to the bottom picture?

Very nice catch.

Nicely done. Thanks for sharing.

Great post and solid fish. Good job.

Nice gills!

Beautiful fish. Doesn't that lake have a lot of vegetation in it?

Awesome post!

I have to agree. The shape certainly looks more like a Green than any other Sunfish type to me but I don't see the telltale sign of white, orange, or yellow on the edges of the fins. But its large mouth, forehead shape, and smaller opercle point to Green, can't tell about it having a dark spot on the end of its dorsal. Definitely a cool fish.

I think he has greenie in him for sure. Maybe its a geenie × bluegill?

I fished there a couple weeks before you did and caught a lot of bass, a couple crappie, and one Warmouth. He engulfed my crankbait!