I intent to stop by the FWP office and get a direct answer on this topic before taking any action, but I can't come up with a clear answer from reading the regs. In any of the districts (Western, Central, and Eastern) bluegills are not mentioned regarding live or dead beat. There is a list of the live bait fish and without bluegills on the list it is implied they are not allowed for live bait. Dead bait it states how yellow perch cannot be used as bait except when all of the usable meat is kept intact and saved for personal consumption. But there is again no words on bluegill. Growing up and fishing on the east coast, whenever I would catch really small blue gills I would toss them out whole on another line or chop them up and use them as bait and catch twice as many and bigger fish than when using shiners or other baits. I'd like to keep a couple of the dinks from little ponds and use them for some big predatory fish (assuming the ice ever builds up on big waters).
So my question is, can bluegills or other sunnies be used as dead bait in Montana?
