i havent fish in a couple weeks, are the sunfish still in the spawn mode? if they are i plan on leaving them alone. this has been a wierd year, they should be done by now.

They are done

They should be done but a caught quite a few bluegills today had not spawned yet. It all depends on the lake.

cool, now i can keep a few of the best tasting fish there is, the sunfish. i sure am hungry for a meal of them bad boys.

I agree on the best tasting part.

That strip on the back is the best.

they just started spawning by me.

Timing is different everywhere you go. One month ago I saw the first beds with males, two weeks ago I saw the first copulation (yeah, I said it), today I saw some more of the hot and heavy stuff. Every lake is different. Sometimes one lake can have a bunch of spawns over a couple weeks.

On the DNR website you can read lengthy research pieces about all sorts of different fishing issues. I remember reading one about panfish and it said that there was poor recruitment of panfish in a year when they spawned late. I think it had something to do with the young being bite size when many other fish were hungry. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/fisheries/investigational_reports.html

http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/fisheries/investigational_reports/458.pdf

I don't want to re-ignite the 'what can we do about small panfish' debate, but you may want to take this into consideration when you're out.

I cleaned 20 sunfish today and they were all void of their eggs. Thats from Lake Frances by Elysian.

i was out on tuesday and the majority of them hadn't spawned yet and that was in the sauk center area

Cut up a handful of fish and half still had spawn.

Some females still have eggs in them around new prague.

I caught a dozen keepers on West Okaboji and all had spawn on Monday morning