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IN. has plenty of 11" gills don't be fooled. most gill fishermen still fish shallow in Indiana though. the ones that do fish deep find those 10-11" fish fairly regular. a lot more lakes hold 10"+ fish, from what I have found, than people think. i could name at least a dozen lakes that produce monsters in northern IN. personally I would rather have a sack of 7-9"ers for the plate. those monsters knocking at deaths door tend to be mealy. imoimo, bed raping idiots do the most damage to the monsters in IN. this isn't an "Indiana topic" though. different areas of the country have drastically different fisheries. an 11" gill mite be unheard of in some places, for whatever reasons. they live where you find them.
This one came from a small lake in Mid-Michigan. It was caught in 10 fow. It was taken two years ago and is my personal best, to date. It is laying on the bottom of a five gallon bucket!
A lot of those bigger gills have been caught and let go earlier when they were smaller. They are much smarter now. I've found 1lb test and the tiniest jigs are sometimes the only way they'll even look at it, let alone take a really quick taste. It really helps to sight fish these types of monsters. They do this really quick inhale exhale on the jig, only once, if you aren't watching you'll never get em.
If it's anything like Massachusetts most anglers there would rather catch a 10 inch stocked trout, so there isn't the pressure on them there is in other states. I’d rather catch that bluegill than a ten pound bass!Here's a close to 3 pound Mass bluegill. Not a hybrid. (Image removed from quote.)
11" long is one thing, but how about 11" girth! this one was 10.5" and 10.75" around. not 11 but a 10x10 gill is as impressive as an 11" gill imo. definitely a farm pond fish and even perhaps a hybrid but definitely impressive. (Image removed from quote.)
when i went to college in VA i worked for a landscaping company. we were doing a big project at a house that kind of was out int he middle of nowhere. I would go for walks during lunch and happened upon a pond. It was like this small 1 acre pond hidden away in the forest. there was a small dock and no building or anything around. I saw the spawn beds and the next day came back and caught probably 30-40 blue gills. each one 9 to 11" they were huge across the back and ferociously attacked the beetle spin i was chucking. I put about 20 of them in a bucket and we ate them (i was young and stupid) and then came back the next day and did it again. We had a grand fish fry with friends at the dorm. The next week when the homeowners of the house we were working on came back from vacation. I asked them about that treasure pond that I had seen. The guy goes, oh yeah, thats the neighbors pond down the road. All the fish in there are his PETS and he hand feeds them everyday. oops. needless to say i never spoke of it again. Luckily the week prior i had been the only one working at the site so basically only i knew (and the people in the dorm)