Bluegill Fly Fishing & Flies will show you that large bluegill can be as selective as any trout. Their pugnacity is legendary and their yanking, diving, twisting battles make for a tenacious opponent, especially on ultralight equipment. The Wilsons share: proper equipment; the best flies, including their recipes and techniques for using them; identifying the most productive bluegill waters; bluegill habits and behaviors; effective presentations; and many more tips learned over their combined 75 years of experience fishing for bluegill. This book is your guide to more and larger bluegills.

Application of the organophosphate insecticide Abate three times (at about monthly intervals) to duplicate 0.04 ha earthen ponds at 18 g/ha (4 micrograms/liter) -- the recommended application rate -- and 180 g/ha (40 micrograms/liter) caused no mortality on blugills. In ponds treated with 18 g/ha fewer bluegill fry were produced than in control ponds, brain acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity was not affected, and accelerated growth of both fry and adults appeared to result from heavy feeding on dead or moribund Diptera larvae that resulted from the first two applications of Abate. The routine use of Abate at the recommended rate should have little adverse effect on fishery resources.

Significantly higher numbers of aquatic insects were sampled in treated ponds than in untreated, and insect numbers at high-treatment ponds were significantly higher than at low-treatment ponds. Chironomids were dominant and significatnly increased after a certain level of treatment. Chironomids comprised 74 percent of samples from high-treatment ponds, but only 43 and 42 percent respectively fro untreated and low-treatment ponds. Methoxychlor residues were not detectable in pond-bottom mud samples.

In conjunction with already existing methods for measuring the chemical and physical characteristics of water, methods for rapidly measuring biological effects of water quality would be very useful. Thus the authors studied the effects of pollution on the breathing rates of bluegills. The presence of zinc at concentrations of 8.7, 5.22, 4.16 and 2.55 mg/l in dechlorinated municipal tapwater was detected by an increase in breathing rate or a change in breathing rate variance of bluegills. None of the fish exposed to the three lower concentrations died during the experiments. The criterion for detection was an arbitrary number of responses occurring at the same time. An in-plant system for the prevention of fish kills caused by spills could be developed by monitoring several biological functions of fish simultaneously.