Rancho Seco Big Sunfish

I hit Rancho Seco early this morning and started throwing senkos.  I lost a few fish and got nothing in the boat all morning.  I saw huge bass all day cruising the shallows.  Finally around 11:30 I managed to get a couple big redear and a big bluegill.  The biggest was 9.99 inches long.  I had trouble getting them in the boat on my UL with 4lb line, they fought like mad!  I just wish I could figure out the bass in this lake.

Small blue gills are the great bait for those cruising bass.  Trying using brown crawdad jigs works as slow as possible along the weed lines. Just kinda twitch them once in a while. Hope we can hook up for some fishing real soon!

-Brian

I love fishing for panfish.

Nice pics.

MolBasser

Thanks for the info Brian.  Oh BTW I saw a bluegill or redear in about 10 feet of water that was huge.  It must have been about 2 pounds at least.  Im not kidding , It was so thick I thought it was a bass at first.  After seeing that fish Im tempted to go back there and try to catch one that big.  I hear you have to fish deep to catch the huge panfish but it seems hard because the dinks always swarm your bait

those redear are some tasty bitches, huh?  I panfried a whole mess of them once while camping at Perris, socal.  I thought they were blue gill when I caught them, but now when I look at the pics, they're redear.

I found small cranks are pretty good at selecting the larger more aggressive sunfish.  I've had luck with a teeny craw and a similar sized cricket shaped crankbait.  On the same premise, even a beetlespin mini spinner bait might work.

The biggest bluegill I ever saw must have approached 11 or 12 inches and close to 2 lbs at Loch Lomond, SC.  Inflated crawler by trout island, sept 02.  That thing looked gruesome.

Yea they were tasty.  YUM YUM!  I was trolling around with a countdown rapala a lot that day and nothing.  I tried throwing a beetlespin a lot but I couldnt get anything to take it.  Im really suprised that I couldnt get any sunfish to go after artificials.  I threw every thing at them and fished shallow and deep and nothing.  My only luck was with redworms on the beds.

Oops ,I keep forgetting to log in.