Bitching and Blogging
2lbgill





2lbgills bluegill room
The Mince This is the home of the Mince,
these little guys only come out at night and their
favorite pastime is stealing bobber's and hanging
them in the trees on the edge of lakes and rivers.
They make excellent Mince Meat Pies and the best
time to go Mince hunting is at night. The best places
to find them are in the woods adjacent to water.




January,24,2017 finally got out ice fishing and it was all work, there is 12-15 inches of ice + 5 inches of slush under 6 inches of snow. Fishing was ok but size was way down on Horseshoe Lake compared to last year. A lot of fishermen came in through the campground last winter plus campers there later never stop at their limit. I would say it is being well over fished and no at the campground really cares just bring them money.


DECEMBER,1,2016 Deer season is over and from hat I hear not a lot of bucks were around. I as lucky and got a spiker so at least we have some venison inthe freezer for a change. We took out the back straps, tenderloins and ground the rest into hamburger. Here's a tip............. get some beef fat and mix it into the venison at 15% ratio and you'll have the finest burger you ever ate. There is a story to this spiker I sho
t,
Unusual hunting tale this year. My hunting partner missed a spike buck and we could only find a few tuff's of gray hair in the grass where he was standing and no blood. We searched the timber for awhile to no avail. About 4 days later I shot a spike buck in the same field and it had a split in the hide on it's back and it's spine was showing. Same buck and he should have been paralyzed when John hit him. To top it all off he showed up on my other partners web cam a couple of times with a 6 pointer and you can see the crease in his back in the photos. We hadn't checked the cam lately before this because Russ was hunting with me. This just proves the point that deer don't go much out of their square mile like the biologist say. We are allowed to hunt over bait in MI and we bait 30 yards in from the Timber and he was sneaking his way over to the baited area. He ran about 50 yards into the timber before folding ( a lung shot.)Low and behold he had a spot of hide missing about 1 1/2 in. in dia. and the spine was exposed. You would think that it would have parlized him but apparantly it was just close enough that it just split the skin.


S
EPTEMBER,9,2016 Summer has faded and the bluegill fishing was pretty good this year once they went deep. The hunting season is fast approaching and it doesn't look very good. I have yet to see a doe with fawns and only one dry doe is coming into the yard. The lack of deer is having an impact on the gouse and rabbit numbers because the Coyotes and Wolfs need meat and with the lack of deer they appeared to have had a big impact on young grouse and rabbits. We have not seen any young grouse and haven't had rabbit in the yard in 3 years. The predatores have to eat..........

JUNE,6,2016, Finally got out fishing last week and it was super, the males were srting to work into the shallows looking for a place to build a nest. We were throwing small artificials while staying about 50 ft off shore to keep from spooking them. The spawn in the females was still hard and the males were not peing yet. I should have checked the water temps but we know we are 2 weeks behind on everything else. Two very good friends of mine came to fish with me and us old farts made the best of it. We had to throw back at least over 100 Bluegills and small Bass, we kept a dozen for a meal ot have with a few beers.

April,2016, Spring is 14 days old and we have 5-6inches of fresh snow on da ground today.............. this sucks. The ice on most lakes is un-safe and it is too cold to work out side so not much of a cure for cabin fever is in sight.

January,2016, Hopefully a much smoother year than last but I'm not really complaining as I am still vertical.  The ice has been iffy but should change today with zero weather finally here. This year I am going to try our own lake which is right out the back door and a short walk down the lake. I haven't used my large Shappel pop up shelter for 2 years now, it fishes 4 with room to spare ( 105"x105") and with the heater on it is very summer like warm and comfortable. The only thing I don't like about ice fishing is that when the gills are biting every Tom Dick and Harry comes out and they don't care if they rape the lake or not. The biggest predator of fish are these fishermen that only fish Bluegills when they are easily accessible like ice fishing or when they go on the bed's. The State of Michigan is DNR has fallen far behind states like Il, MN and WI by not imposing lower limits like 10 Bluegills a day, then they increase the possession limits so it is worth while for fishermen to make a trip worthwhile.  BS it is to increase tourism for small business owners. Here in the U.P. most lakes are over fished when compared to Wisconsin and Minnesota where the fishing is a lot better, you can't even argue that MI fishing is better because it isn't.

October,20,2015,
Did the summer go fast, too fast. Had a lot of medical issues this year but all fixed now and hopefully they all stay.

WIRELESS INTERNET

I haven't a lot to blog about except my great dissatisfaction with my internet connection. I tried the 4G thru Verizon but that only lasted 4 days and I had it disconnected because it used up half of the monthly data 4 Mb  of 10 Gb. Then I found out that Verizon converts all data to HD on a 4Gb connection. I then switched to satellite internet that advertised high speed connections, yeah sure.  It's been over a year now and all I can say is most of the time it is below 5M/sec, you complain and they want you to un-plug and re-plug the equipment until it comes faster and 10 min.later it goes back down. My guess is that they overload the satellite signal badly. For 10 Gb we pay $60/mo. which is ridiculous but we have no choice. If you  use up your data they will sell you more for $10/Gb.........Wireless internet sucks and is not reliable and is for shit when used for gaming.
 
June,15,2015,
Finally have this computer back on line after the board went, now for an update. The bluegills are just coming off the beds but there are a few stragglers. We had a super day a couple of weeks ago tossing artificial's into the shallows, we tossed back 40-50 of the 9+inches type of male Bluegills. We should have a good year this year as I saw a ton of beds and I hope the greedy fishermen don,t rape them too badly.

April,14,2014,

If our (Koch Puppet) Elephant Governor's new 7% sales tax and gas tax bill in MI gets approved by the voters it will in cost the average person $424 per year (per Channel 6 report)). What was your raise this year? The average SSI increase was only about $335. When Snyder gave the the corporations and upper 5% a $4.5 billion tax break how come we couldn't vote on that? They are spending millions on a advertising campaign showing pieces of blacktop and hitting windshields and crying mothers but don't mention that it is suppose to fill the void left from the big tax cuts so the budget gets back in the black. Wisconsin is next...

March,6,2015,  Haven't been fishing for quite awhile now due to the coldest February on record for the U.P. of Michigan. Hope to get out a couple of times more if march co-operates.

February,2,2015,
I guess it's been awhile since I last posted, we have been out a few times but fishing hasn't been too good since the day we put the shack out. I have fished another coule of lakes but it has been slow and only have a couple meals of gills to show for it. I guess I don,t have the ambition like I use to have or maybe I just require nicer weather these days. Cabin fever must be setting in because I am thinking about the boat and the head gasket I have to replace on my 30EL Mariner and the trailer wiring harness installed on our Ford Escape.


December,22,2014, ice fishing is just starting here in the U.P. We put the shack out on the ice a week ago and there was plenty of ice "9 inches" which will hold a car. We did catch some fish too, one Perch and a couple of Bluegills then we quit to watch the Packers lose to the Bills, .......... should have stayed fishing. Make sure that you fish over weeds if you want to have a chance at catching any fish. Just remember to release the spawner's over 9 inches.

October,29,2014, well it is time for the first white stuff as the rains that we have been getting all year are going  to change to snow tomorrow. if you are planing on some travel here use caution because the first snow here is usually bad and greasy as hell because Marquette county usually chases a snow storm instead of attacking it like other county's do. if they would pre-treat the roads before the storm they could save a lot of accidents and reduce the cost of a storm.  does a penny wise and dollar foolish apply here ?

October,2,,2014,i haven't been fishing for quite awhile now, in fact since sept. 28 (see below) a couple of weeks ago I got a spike buck with the crossbow so we have some venison in the freezer. I think it will be awhile before we have any hard ice.

September,28,2014, we had a pretty good day today on bluegills and also fishing in comfort on a friends pontoon boat. surprisingly a lot of them were suspended about 20 ft. down which was also the magic number for bottom feeders. most of the fish were 8 1/2 - 10 in.  of which we kept 14 with all the rest released for another day.

I was in another bluegill site today and on it apparently a lot of the members on there get chickens confused with bluegills because they kept calling them hens. This is one of my pet peeves when people come up with stupid classifications trying to sound like a politically correct fishing expert
, i have never seen feathers on a fish yet.

while I am at i don't think much about catching and bragging about pellet fed private pond bluegills of which most of them are genetically engineered fish, I consider this nothing but saying hey I can buy bragging rights, aren't I good. show me the ones that come from the wild and are a challenge to catch to get my respect.


september,19,2014 now confirmed ........... the over heating problem is cracked head gasket which more or less ends the fishing for this year with this rig. by the time i get the casket for this "89" marriner which is really a yamaha the season will be over so i will concentrate on a friends lake which is mainly catch and release but a heck of a lot of fun.

september,11,214 a couple of buddies came in last monday for some fishing and a little comaderie with beer of course. we went to the greenwood resrvoir on tuesday and found the parking lot empty which was the first clue that we might get skunked. we never had a bite after 3hrs and marking fish in most areas plus the motor would overheat a liitle if we worked it so we were a little apprehensive about staying to long when heavy winds were predicted to be coming. We left the lake and went to big shag before the afternoon got too short. we had tons of action on the gills there but they were mostly 4-5 inch ones and we ended up with 5 keepers about 7 1/2" .end of the trip for them because the weather was going to take a dump the next day which it did.

September,4,2014 the wife andi decided it was time to fish another lake that we hadn't fished yet this year so we went to engman lake. when we arrived the lot was full of dnr vehicles which had taken up all of the parking area. let's see there was a ford f-450 diesel with a 30 ft. trailer behind for transporting the front end loader and the bobcat loader which were sitting in area. Ione parking area as filled with and and the other parking area had a large tandem dump truck and much largertractor type truck with 30 ft. stone hauler behind it. I stppped by the f-450 to ask the driver where we should park, and mentioned to him this must be our new license fees at work and his response was he was only following orders. The drive into and around the lauch really didn't need stone on it as it was in great condition before i thought. I would say a little over kill with 2 men and 5 pieces of equipment to do a  small job like this. after 2 hrs in lots of wind and no bites we gave up.

august,25,2014 a good friend and fishing buddy from wisconsin dale and his wife came up last week for some fishing and relaxing time. We went fishing a couple of times and did very good on the bluegills but I am not telling where we were fishing. Dale refused to pay michigan's high price of $75 for a fishing license so he bought a 24 hr. license for $10 which he had he bait shop start at 2:00 pm which gave him the whole afternoon to fish and the next day until 2:00 pm. so if you are planning on fishing in michigan it is better to split it over 2 days like 12pm -12pm and be able to fish 6 days for $30.

August,14,2014 well fishing has been slow this year with all of the cool weather slowing down water temps. Finally we have a therm-o-clime and can do some drift fishing. we fished little shag ( use to be my favorite lake ) a couple of times and caught just one meal. not many bluegill left in this lake anymore due to over fishing them on the beds and just plain over fishing the lake by people whom take everything they catch.

July,14,2014 A buddy from mercer stopped in for a couple of days and he likes to fish bluegills as much as i do so we had a few beers first then did some fishing. We took 2 rods with us one with a slip bobber and one with out. we never used the slip bobber rig because they were in about 15 ft.of water and we found them drifting off the drop off's with a 1/32 oz jigs and a small piece of crawler. we threw back a ton of 7-8 inch bluegills after keeping a couple of meals of 81/2 - 9 in bluegills. I caught one 10 1/2'' male that was still spawning in 15 ft. of water. I believe that there is still some deep water spawning of big bluegills going on, we released a couple of females that still had spawn in them. I finally got the hitch put on my ford escape so maybe I can get out bluegill fishing more now since I am all caught up on my yard work

june,2,2014 summers finally here .... maybe I and the wife went fishing last friday for the first time this spring, we did pretty good using artificials casting shallow water for bluegills. They are just starting to get interested in the process now and it should be a couple of weeks before they come on in full force. we got a chance to use our new st.croix  ps66lf2 fast action rods. They did a perfect job for us with our light artificials and 4# test lines, i hope they work out in the boat as drift rods too which is the other reason we purchased them, so far so good.

May,21,2014 I haven't posted for awhile and maybe because I have been waiting for spring to arrive and wanted proof it has. Cold warm' cold' warm take your pick it changes daily. Once and a while I sell an item on Ebay for pocket money and it use to be easy but now forget it as it is nothing but a pain. 20% fees, 1 hour to submit, 1 hour taking decent pictures, 1/2 hr processing for the web, 1/2 hr taking item to shipper plus gas makes it a losing deal. Then  a buyer lies to ebay and wants a return because it is not as listed. Buyer said it doesn't work but on the listing I posted pictures taken with the camera before shipping. I listed it as no returns and no refunds  but ebay declared they could have their money back and debited my Paypal account.I did not find this out until after the fact and Ebay never contacted me.There is no concern for the seller whom pays EBay money and the buyer pays ebay nothing but has buyer protection. Kinda fucking dumb isn't it when we sell on Ebay and make Ebay money and they shit on the seller.

april,5,2014
again i sit here looking out the windows at the pole barn wondering when i can get the boat out of it and start getting it in shape and going over all the rods and reels. I was thinking again about haveing a forum on 2lbgil for fellow fishermen to post pictures and comments which would be great! but after re-hashing this again I decided not to as it would be too time consuming and probably get a lot of fishermen mad at me because of how I would eliminate any post that did not stay on the subject of just bluegills. I use to frequent a bluegill site that was great at the start and there were some great posts on catching bluegills plus a lot of different schemes and methods for putting lunkers in the cooler. as more and more fishermen joined it no longer was just a place for bluegills and lunker bluegill anymore because people were putting up bass pictures, cars, boats, trucks, preaching, personally insulting people, obscene limits of bluegill and everything else which is okay but this is not what I was interested in or why I had joined originally. Being a moderator takes a lot of time and I would rather fish.

April,5,2014
the last week has been one that can make a man drink way too much, just when you think it is finally going to warm up old man weather delivers another dose of what he does best when you think you'll see the last of him. the yard was starting to dry out a little where it was kept plowed. Bang! we get another 8" of wet snow and so here we go again.........another hopefully warm up that stays.

March,20,2014
here it is almost spring and we are still the same weather as February and it looks like this weekend it will get down to zero again. I think that the f%#$@#ng Russian's are screwing around with the weather and shoving the Siberia winters on this side.

February,03,2014
at least it is getting a little warmer and we are finally getting above zero during the daytime. I hope we get a little relief from the cold so a person can get outside and do something and maybe a little ice fishing. The weathermen say this cold is going to be here for awhile and I hope they are wrong like usuall.

January,20.2014
zero weather coming in again for the next week, i won't be getting out on the ice this week so I need to find something else to talk about and i have a couple of subjects on my mind. one is how some blugill sites like to refer that the bluegills we catch in the midwest are northern strain bluegills and that the florida type of bluegill "copper nose" is really the only true real bluegill. In reality the copper nose is a subspecies of bluegills that is easily adaptable to articial conditions like THE SOUTHERN AREA fish farms and private lakes and can be easily BE conditioned into feeding on nothing but special food pellets to promote growth for the purpose of commercial trophy fishing WHICH CAN DEMAND FEES LIKE $500/DAY TO CTACH THESE 2LB PLUS GIILS.

FACT - tHE BLUEGILLS THAT ARE CAUGHT IN MOST BODY,S OF WATERS IN THE MAJORITY OF THE STATES THAT HAVE NATURAL POPULATIONS OF BLUEGILLS ARE THE TRUE BLUEGILLS AND WITH THE COPPER NOSE BLUEGIILS NO KNOWS WHY THEY ARE DIFFERANT FROM REGULAR BLUEGILLS AND ARE SUBCEPTABLE TO ARTIFICIAL FEEDING CONDITIONS THAT CAN PROMOTE SUPER GROWTH, WHICH i MIGHT ADD CANNOT BE USED FOR RECORD BOOKS.........

wE CATCH BLUEGILLS AND FLORIDA CATCHES COOPER NOSE BLUE GILLS....PERIOD....  NORTHERN STRAIN PEOPLE THAT SAY REGULAR BLUEILLS ARE NORTHERN STRAIN ARE JUST DEMEANING TRUE BLUEGILLS TO PROMOTE THEIR COMMERCIAL INTERESTS. BLUEGILLS REPRESENT PROBABLY 99% AND COPPER NOSE ABOUT 1% OF BLUEGILL CATCHES.

i USED TO BELONG TO BIGBLUEGILL.COM BUT REMOVED MYSELF 2 YEARS AGO DUE TO CONFLICT WITH MY PHILOSIPHYS ON BLUEGILL FISHING.....NUFF SAID


January,17,2014
our zero polar vortex has left and finally we are getting back to normal temps.  We went out on a local lake last saturday to check out all of our ice gear for the first time this year, there was approximately 14-16 inches of ice with at least 14-16 inches of snow on top!. i needed to try out my new porter cable 20v drill with the lithium battery,s, which i was hoping would do the job with this much ice. I drilled 7 holes with it and it was starting to stall a little on the 7th one. I could probably have gotten one more hole if I needed to. I was using
this with my ice master adapter attached to the augar part of my 5 inch mora hand drill. i have to say it was pretty impressive the way it went thru the ice as if it were butter, it only took about 5 seconds to go thru 16 inches of ice. I kept the drill braced tight against my left leg so the torque wouldn't twist my wrist which it can do easily. a guy should have a drill with the extra handle on top. Russ my fishing partner caught 3 and lost 3 gills and i had 2 bites and caught a 5 inchr. as i am writing this we dont have internet because my um-175 air card went and I am waiting for a new one to come from Ebay after I used the neighbors computer to order it. back on line now .................

january,7,2014
i hope the weathermen are right when they say the zero weather will be leaving us and we are in for a little warmer temps than what we have been thru lately. I haven't been out ice fishing yet but hope to get out this weekend. I had some health issues with the heart but now everything is fixed and I am ready to go. I heard there is over 18 inches of ice on most lakes but we also have a lot of snow on the lakes which is not good as it weighs down the ice and puts slush between the snow and the ice which can make for hard walking.


december,7,2013
Deer season is over and with all of the zero weather that we have had, the lakes are freezing real good. some fishermen have been seen on some of the lakes here but I would use caution the first time out and fish with a buddy and carry a rescue rope. we had had a lot of rain here this year and the ground water tables are way up and this is causing a lot of springs to return to the lakes and the last thing a fisherman wants to do is step thru the ice over one. Pay attention !!!


october,31,2013
well the boat is put away until spring and If I wanted to I couldn't use it anyways because it is now a storage bin in the winter for all of the summer crap after we put away the yard for the winter. It will be a good 6 weeks before we can get out on the hard water. I bought a new shappel ice shack last year which holds 3-4 people for ice fishing with room to spare. I have a few rod reports to make on my new St Croix rods i boughht last spring and gave a real test on them. 

So now i am concentrating on deer season which starts november,15th. We have been baiting our spots since October,1rst and it doesn't look real good this year because we have seen very little sign and fewer animals than last year. What we need this year is a
Plot Watcher to keep tract of how many deer are working the area and the routes they use to get there.


September,15,2013

We haven't been out since last Monday when I and a friend fished crooked lake, I hadn't been fishing on it for quite awhile because we have been refraining from fishing it due to the reduced bluegill numbers. we fished it for 4 hrs. and it appears the numbers are down significantly since we were here last, and it appears like it was fished pretty hard this summer. There is no public access on this lake but certain individuals always find a way to con one of the property owners into giving them access. We caught fish but had a hard time finding a lot of keeper size gills and we didn't find that many small gills like there was 4-5 years ago.

September,6,2013
Fishing just isn't the same this year the way the weather is, we were out yesterday on Little shag and never caught a bluegill which is a first for us. The Last 2 weekends we took the grand children out on a friends pontoon raft on one a lake that has no public access but a ton of bluegills in it, but has a catch to it and that is they are all the same size ...... 7 in.'s. or less, You can catch one after another sometimes and the kids have a ball. I would say that the bluegill population is way down in most of the lakes the last couple of years and there are a lot fewer fishermen on them this year than other years. It might take another 4-5 years for them to come back and that is if we have a better spawn than we had this year.


August,29,2013
The summer fishing has been about a month behind this year due to the late spring and cool temperatures in mid summer that we have had. The bluegills will typically in a normal year will be in deeper water come the middle of july and this year it wasn't until the middle of august. Bluegills like a water temperature of mid 60's or higher in the deeper water and this year the bottom temps were in the lower 60's and are just rising into the upper 60's now and should stay there thru mid september. In other words we will be getting some August bluegill fishing way into September this year. The thermoclines are about 15-17 ft. right now tat I have measured.


July,31,2013
i am a little late with this report but better late than sorry is what they say. We finally caught a couple of nice meals on on of the local lakes a couple of days ago drifting in 20-22 ft. of water. The fishing was pretty spotty until mid afternoon when they turned on after 2:00  and the feeding spree lasted about 2 hrs. We ended up with 9 real nice bluegills and 6 perch 10-12 inches. We were using 1/32 oz. jigs with a small piece of crawler. We are going to fish another lake tomorrow that we have not fished in a long time and hear that a few nice bluegills have been showing up there. 3 gallons of blueberry's so far and 1 more to go before we have enough.

July,28,2013
Been awhile since I posted and that is because we haven't done that good on the Bluegills while fishing. Little Shag has not been too good so far this year and we have been rained out a few times and also been blown off the lake. The Blueberry picking is super though with tons of blueberry's in the woods as they are everywhere and of great size for UP berry's.


July,4,2013
boy I need to go Bluegill fishin
g but  thi
s isn't working too good as I'm not getting the time to go this week ..................... this sucks!

june,26,2013
boy we went to little shag yesterday yesterday and today and not much to show for it, saw a few old beds and when it got too hot to fish (88 degrees), this was beer time.


june,24,2013
A couple of buddies came over from 3 lakes and we had a ball on the bluegills in a small lake using artificial crawdads, they are done spawning in this lake and were still in shallow water. Catch and release of over 50 fish........a ball.

June,22,2013
we went out yesterday with some friends on "little shag lake"..........."wrong"..........., fished for about 4 1/2 hours and had 2 keeper bluegills to show for it. we only saw one spot that there were any beds and they were full of debris already and so it appears that the season was quick and short when we were not ther or the fishermen cleaned the breeders out before they spawned which is more common then you think. There are a lot fewer gills in this lake than last year and if you don't believe me try it!!!! Out brilliant DNR decision on giving  the fishermen 3 days possession limit really is showing up now as plain dumb. they say Their reason was to make it worth while for the fishermen to come to the U.P.  ..............   bullshit it was to cater to the campgrounds and resort owners and sell more licenses. it's about time that the mi dnr wakes up and start doing more research like MN, WI and IL with the bluegills. they are behind the times with their thinking as these 3 states all are reducing panfish limits in their lakes.

June,13,2013
Well not much luck with the bluegills again tuesday the 12th and we saw very few beds and we fished 2 differant lakes, the water temperature was 66f on the surface in both lakes so it must be colder below to keep the bluegills from spawning. we did find that the bass are just now spawning and because we were tossing artificial's we did pretty good on the bass. Everything went back and we never eat bass anyways uuuggghh. check out some pictures


June,11,2013
we tried again yesterday and still didn't find too many beds, the water temperature is 66f on the surface now and that should bring the males in to make beds. Apparently the water underneath is still too cold. last Friday we were out and we caught a meal of 8-9 in. gills in 18 ft. of water on artificials, they were in the top 4 ft. and suspended, I figured they were stag
e
inging off shore waiting for the water to warm up for the spawning ritual. Today we are going to try again to get another meal. I have this feeling that we won't have a full spawn again this year for the third straight year .........not good
.........................Remember don't over fish the beds as it only hurts you own fishing in following years...............................
We have at last 2-3 year classes missing in most lakes that I fish in the Upper Peninsula.
                                    

May,25,2013
haven't been fishing yet because I have a ton of yard duties to do with the spring weather not co-operating at all, plus the water pump went out on my
mariner so I had to order one online. The rig is fixed now and is ready to go as soon as the weekend and holiday is over. I only fish during the week and stay away from trying/fishing on weekends.


May,1,2013
I took a ride today to some of the lakes here to check on ice conditions,the larger lakes still have ice on them while the smaller more shallower lakes are wide open. The temperature reached 60 here today and I found one die hard fisherman out on the ice but he was only 20 ft. from shore over 6 ft. of water and no bites.

april 30,2013
Here it is the end of april and we still have over a foot of ice on the lakes and according to some fishermen it is still pretty solid ice, so It looks like a good chance that come the opening of walleye season (may 15) there will still be ice on the lakes which makes it a little hard on the boat. If a person wants to fish the beds they might have to do it thru a hole.

bluegills and beds
It seems like every article that a person reads on Bluegill fishing they always tells you that if you really want to catch a lot of Bluegills you should fish the beds when they are spawning. Really! now think about this,... if 100% of blue-gill fishermen went out and fished the spawning beds for gills there would be very little bluegills left in 8-9 years which is the average life span of a bluegill. Very few of these articles will tell the fishermen to be selective on the size and sex of the fish to keep, instead they talk about numbers and not catch and release methods.

Don't get me wrong here as I fish them during the spawning season my self, but I never use live bait during the spring when fishing the beds, I only use artificial s at this time and fish just for fun but occasionally I will keep just enough of the females for a meal. During the spring time when the males move into the shallow spawning areas you can see them making beds for spawning, the largest bluegills will get the prime areas and will drive all other gills out of that area and use their energy on the spring ritual, attracting females, spawning, guarding the young and will feed very little at this time. The next size smaller Bluegill males which have been excluded from the process use this period for bulking up on the food chain available so they can get in on the action the next spawning season and be available as bigger Blue-gills for catching next year. If you don't release these big spawning males then the smaller sizes of  Bluegills will take over the areas and according to the latest studies this will change the gene pool and the size of the gills.
.