Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) is a freshwater species recorded in the United States. It is mainly found over sand, mud.
Scientific name: Lepomis macrochirus · Water: Freshwater
Size: up to 41 cm
Weight: up to 2.2 kg
The bluegill is the best-known North American panfish and a member of the sunfish family Centrarchidae: deep-bodied and flattened, with a solid black "ear" flap at the rear of the gill cover, blue-purple cheeks, a yellowish-to-orange breast and, when threatened, five to nine vertical bars. It is native east of the Rocky Mountains, from coastal Virginia and Florida west to Texas and northern Mexico and north to Minnesota, New York and south-eastern Ontario, and it has been stocked so widely that almost every farm pond, reservoir and slow river in the country holds it. Southern anglers call it bream or brim, elsewhere it is a sunny or sunperch, and in Texas a coppernose. Bluegill gather around weed beds, stumps and fallen timber; spawning runs from late May into August, when males fan beds in shallow sand or gravel, and that is the classic bank-fishing window. A bobber and worm, cricket or red worm on 2–6 lb line with a split shot is all it takes — feeding peaks in the morning and again, more strongly, in the evening.
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