The best blue gill bait I use is fly with with gulp maggots/wax worms.  What are some other good baits?

Posted By Zakman1195 on 02 Oct 2010 07:16 PM
The best blue gill bait I use is fly with with gulp maggots/wax worms.  What are some other good baits?

My favorites are:

1.  extremely small dry flies
2.  little Roostertails
3.  sections of nightcrawlers on very small jig heads
4.  small Mister Twisters
5.  small Beetle Spin

I always use Gulp maggots. My buddy uses crickets with smelly jelly on them. He seems to catch more fish with the crickets.
I also use very small poppers, #1 or #2 in line spinner baits, and casting spoons with small treble hooks.

1. Spikes (maggots). 2. Waxworms (moth larvae). 3. Nightcrawlers. 4. Redworms (some guys call them "manure worms"). Soft plastics: either a nail tail or twister tail in black, white or yellow. Hard baits: Rapala ice fishing minnows in black back/silver sides/white belly, jigged over the side of the boat or off the end of a dock.

There are so many things that make great bluegill bait that its hard to say what's the best. But, I guess, good old worms are my handsdown best.  

Make you our bait, Thats what i do alot

Best gill bait in my area: 1. spikes (Chicago slang for maggots); 2. waxworms; 3. nightcrawler pieces; and 4. redworms (sometimes called "manure worms"). All of these baits work good for inland trout, yellow perch and other panfish as well. Best all-around bait for those "I don't care what I catch" days: nightcrawlers. EVERYthing that swims will hit a nightcrawler. Happy holidays, guys!

WORM!! what else???

Hands down, best bluegill bait in Nebraska is crawlers. Grab a couple containers of the 24 ct Canadians from Walmart (WallyWorld as we call it), rip off about a third of one, hang in an eagle claw #4 baitholder, splitshot about 8 inches up and bobber 6-18 inches up from that (depending on the depth of where you're fishing). The trick is to use the smallest weight you can to get it down to the depth you want, and then the smallest bobber that will float. The action of the worm jigging in the water due to the current/waves drives gills insane. One nice thing about fishing here is everything in the lake bites on this setup, so you can aim for gills all day and be productive and have an even better time when a cat or lagemouth runs off with it.

My favorite by far is a small 10-14 black ant fly on a 2 weight fly rod!

Posted By panfish101 on 08 Feb 2012 03:21 PM
My favorite by far is a small 10-14 black ant fly on a 2 weight fly rod!

Yep, dry flies rule most of the season (excluding most of the spawn).  I've had more luck with an a-just-a bubble and a small dry fly than pretty much anything else.

wax worms.

My number one bluegill bait is Big Bite 1inch tubes Blue with White skirt/trailer tenticles. They love it around Indiana waters.

I LIVE IN NORTH ALABAMA AND I FIND CRICKETS TO BE THE TICKET HERE ON A $6 GOLD HOOK.

I do remember when I was a kid, we fished for bluegills in a place called "Ramer Lake" between Brawley and Calipatria,CA and we mostly used minnows, shore minnows (the ones which look like guppies) and redfin shiners. We also used worms once in a while. In several years, we (my sister actually) only caught one crappie, just bluegills.

Night crawler on a slip rig tears them up for me. My second choice would be a small rooster tail (color just depends on time of day and season).

I like to use a ice jig the flat kind tipped with any of the Berkley maggots, wax worms or night crawler. I use an ultra light rod tie on a Thill shy bite float and then the ice jg 3 feet below the float. The set up is very light and the ice jig flutters as it falls let it set a moment or two then slowly reel it in. If there ar e bluegills around they'll hit it.

I use Berkley Honey Worms...if I can still find them in the local sports store. Caught a mess of gills last weekend, but used about a half a jar of Honey Worms. Had best luck with yellow, but also caught them on Natural and red color.

Natural - a good ol' juicy cricket
Artificial - 1/50 oz. split-tail yellow stripes black beetle spin
The most successful - Whatever the OTHER guy fishing with me is using.

Pieces of crawlers or small Poppers/Spider flys