Night Panfishing

[Mike Stark]

do folks do good fishing for gills and crappie at night?

is it better during the day?

thanks,

mike

[The Grebe]

Mike...Not alot of fishing for bluegills goes on at night.... not a nightime fish, like say a walleye, or a crappie.

Occassionally a sunfish will be caught at night, but for the most part, it is the exception to the rule. They are more of a daylight and low light fish of mornings and evenings.

Crappies can be caught just about any time and also at night, but they usually have a window that they prefer for maximum activity and from there it is a slower bite. Again, there is exceptions and for whatever reason, there might be a flurry of activity at any given hour.

[fisherdog19]

It really depends on the body of water, but in general the gills slow down at night and the crappies pick up during low light and into the night but like Grebe said, there are always exceptions to the norm.

[Scott M]

Crappies are known as night biters because they have some of the best night time vision of MN game fish. Bluegills and sunfish will also turn into night biters on lakes where there is a good evening zooplankton vertical migration. In short, it's generally in clear waters where those organisms are at risk of fish predation by sight...they sink down and hang out near the bottom and then raise up at night to feed on phytoplankton.

I would pretty much agree with what has already been said, but you can get both species in the evening. Crappies and sunfish have different daytime and nighttime haunts and its worth trying to find where exactly those locations are.

[CALVINIST]

There is this one lake I ice fish and more times that not you can hardly get a bluegill to bite during the day, but they sure bite at night. Weird.

[walleye4]

I have a couple small lakes here in Nebraska that are really clear and the gills bite best in low-light periods. Crappie will bite well at night if you can locate an active school of them.

[Blainebob]

I have caught gills during the day and crappies at night from the same holes but the gills do stick around and are caught occasionally