how do sunfish/bluegill school?

[setterguy]

Just wondering if anyone knows how sunfish school. Is there a pattern as to what size/sex fish are going to hang out where? I know that sometimes it seems like the bigger crappies are in the upper part of a school, just wondering if something like this applies to gills.

[decoy]

Very interesting question.

I want to share with you what I experienced on Saturday and Sunday. I used an Aqua View for the first time on a particularly excellent lake I know of for sunfish. It was very interesting to watch what happened. In a nut shell. No fish were around, then suddenly, the school would move in. Sunfish all of near like size would come in and sit below the house and we would catch the interested ones. Schools of sunnies from #'s of 10 to sometimes 50+. They mainly schooled in same size groups. When they would leave, the big bull gills would come in 2 or sometimes 3-4 of them. They were traveling in smaller groups. Could be because there are less of these in number or because that's what they do??? I don't know, I just saw that the smaller fish 5-7 inchers were in large groups when they moved through and the larger 8-10 inchers ( sunnies, yes they were hugh!!!) moved through in small groups.

A funny story to share... we were watching a large school on the camera... 35-40 fish when they kicked it up and were suddenly gone. We thought what the heck is coming. (since there are really no preditors in this lake) here came a young lab up to the door of the shack.

I concluded that the fish get spooked by shadows and movement from above. We could make any noise we wanted and the fish would stick around.... It was moving around that caused them to leave? I'm no expert..... yet... These are just some interesting observations I made.

[CrappieJohn]

Like the big boys in the crappie clan, those bull sunnies tire of the constant picking done by lesser fish and will move off to the side of the "general" activity. When the hungry button goes off though, they will assert themselves and it is then that their dominance will show up. They associate with others of like size within their species to establish a pecking order. It has been my observations with crappies that the biggest get the best and the most of everything crucial to their existance. The huge sunfish have also shown that these tendencies exist with them.

[setterguy]

That is kind of what I expected. The reason I ask, is because the other day we hit a lake and found sunnies everywhere we went, but couldn't locate the larger ones. We tried everywhere. The fish were so aggressive that you couldn't hardly pick and choose which fish to target. I guess we should have kept moving to find the big ones instead of thinking they would be mixed in with the smaller fish. Thanks for the tips.