Bluegill as cutbait

What's been your experience using bluegill for cutbait?

It's excellent cut bait. Shad #1, bluegill #2, carp#3.

I hammer the blues all summer on chopped Bluegill and the dinks cats have a hard time steeling your bait like threadfins...winter time I chop the tail off and filet one side and use the whole blugill as big as I can get. Occasionally the fish are picky and prefer a gizzard shad but most days i use use both gizzards and gills and can't tell any diffference. Bluegill far outperform threadfins in my experience. Not that cats don't love threads but half my lines come back picked clean and you aren't going to catch many dragging empty hooks!

I tenderize my perch like I do my carp before cutting
Old school classic trick to get the most out of your bait,
I dont find many that even know about it

I like to make about 3 slices on one side of the bluegill and scrape some scales off the other side. I believe this lets out the smell better. I have good luck with frozen gills if I use them within a week after freezing. The fresher the better.

You might as well make "flappers" then

Good stuff guys. I need to give them a shot!

What if you filleted the bluegills, ate that, and used the leftover carcass as bait?

. That would work just as good. I reuse the same gill chunk over and over this time of year and catch 8-10 fish off the same chunk. By the end of the morning its ratter tattered like a SOB but still catching fish like it was fresh.

We target big perch on a local hole and do just that
8-9" perch(gills) are processed and frozen for jug bait and they work just fine
Flats or blues really dont care if its Slim-Fast bait or not,they eat'em.

Tag

Excellent as cut bait. They also work great alive. Flatheads love em.

Bluegill are my go to bait for blues. Gizzards are a little better but I can get bluegill alot easier being a bank fisherman. Hoping to get my first boat soon though so that could all change.

All I use! In fact I cure mine with the same cure they use out west to cure salmon/steelhead eggs. Works wonders and lasts a long time on the boat.

I like to fillet mine into strips. Strip bait works far better than chunk bait in my area. Although I rarely catch anything with the heads, I do use them becasue it's just too much bait to throw away.

Bluegill fishing and catfishing go hand-in-hand.

Live or dead, they are great bait.

On the TN River, they eat anything but the tail. My #2 choice for bait after skipjack.

excellent bait!!!

Some of my biggest blues have come off of whole or cut perch - all from the bank since I don't have a boat