How To Locate and Catch Shellcrackers and Bluegill During the Spawn.

[Music] [Music] welcome back guys to another episode of mid-south outdoors today we are talking about shell crackers it's the spawning season i'm going to talk to you about how i go about scouting them finding them and catching them let's get into it all right guys i'm sight fishing right now i got polarized lenses on and i'm going to get the trolling motor going semi-fast because i want to see the fish before they swim off and the slower you go the faster they you know the more likely they are to swim off before you get to them what i'm doing is i'm cruising the bank really fast and i'm looking down in the water and you'll see the fish there's a big bass right there a decent sized fish 14 incher or so not giant but i think that bass is on a bed too but you can do this for bass you can do this for crappie you can do this for bluegill [Music] all right guys so another way to use onyx i just saw some shell crackers on the beds right there sight fishing i found them i marked them on onex i'm gonna come back here with my sister and we'll catch those okay so i'm not worried about catching them right now i saw them i know they're there i'll bring her back here later this afternoon or in the morning and we'll have those all right guys i found another spot with some shell crackers i marked it on a map i'm gonna keep going see under that tree that looks like brim beds possibly it is i can see them from here so you kind of see there's bluegill beds up under that tree i'm gonna mark that on onyx all right guys i'm up here playing with this raccoon and you probably can't see it there's a shell cracker bed right up under this tree i don't know if it makes a difference or not but let me see if i do it through my polarized lenses if you can see any better i can see them in the water right there there's not a bunch of them in there but i definitely see two right there okay guys let's talk about the brim beds so this particular bed that you're looking at right now is a bed made on day one the first day of the spawn most of the vegetation is still there but you'll notice the water is a lot more cloudy than it is everywhere else so i'm over here trying to explain this to my sister if you couldn't tell but this is day one they're the the bluegill and the shell crackers are in there trying to make their beds they're just fanning their tails trying to get the vegetation out of the way you'll see a lot of those little circles this bed in particular is primarily shell crackers and what you'll notice different about shell crackers as opposed to bluegill is they don't always fan out little circles it's really hard to tell in this video because the camera doesn't pick it up very well but there are no circles in this bed it is just a shallow area on a point and it is packed full of shell crackers but there are no circles made in this spot so don't think that because there's no circles there's no fish okay next i want to talk to you about the bluegill and the shell crackers on the beds and how they react to your presence so if you notice the the image got a little bit lighter right there that's the boat actually leaving where i walked in or trolled in to put the camera down and i want you to notice how long it takes for the fish to come back you can see there's a fish already there it took only a few seconds from the boat being over the top now this fish is in less than 18 inches of water and it's the moment that the boat was out of view these shell crackers came right back in the beds so they really want to be here they don't want to leave you can spook them off and they're going to come right back so don't feel like oh you just ran them out of there you might as well leave no hang out they're going to come right back they want to be there they got to spawn instinct is in there and they're just doing their thing all right now let's talk about the bait i used night crawlers you see that's a full-sized night crawler and you think that it's too big a worm look how fast this fish gobbles that night crawler up most people tell you that night crawlers are too big to fish for bluegill and shell crackers but they're not they're the right size for shell crackers you see how fast that sucker just almost swallowed it shell crackers have a lot of competition in there they're on the beds they're not feeding as much i'm sure they're hungry and they're also in a defense state where they're defending their bed so anything that enters their bed they're trying to get it out so if you drop it in the bed don't feel like you need to pull it out and wiggle it move it just leave it there something is going to come by and get it competition rules right here because these fish are competing against each other you'll see them pecking at each other a lot another thing you'll notice is that a lot of times these shell crackers will grab your worm eat it and then not move and your line won't move because the shell cracker itself has not moved so you won't know you have a bite a lot of times if you can't see them and this is much easier to see in clear water like the lake that i'm fishing now if you have muddy water this is a lot more difficult okay you're going to notice i'm not using any weight at all i'm using a bare hook the size of the hook can vary you don't have to have a specific type of hook it's better to have a long shank hook so it's easier to get the fish off but when i'm fishing this i'm really trying to pay attention to the slack in my line it's very critical to get the right amount of slack in your line you don't you don't want the worm to move so you need enough slack in your line to allow that worm to just sit on its own but you want you don't want too much in there where you can't tell when you got a bite so i'm a line watcher i watch the line so that i can see that little subtle movement of when the fish has grabbed it so you want to have a perfect little bow in your slack line so that you can see if it twitches a little bit that's when you got a bite that's when you need to jerk and set the hook so you pay attention to your hook and your worm until the cast is made right so you're watching this and you're feeling the weight and you're casting like that but once the worm's in the water don't even worry about it so i leave the bail open i pull back like this and let's line out okay now i'm looking down there i already got a fish i'm trying to show you but i keep getting a fish too fast to show you it's a little guy hey he'll keep okay so cast your worm over there now stop your rod is open your bails open pull some slack now throw your bell all right now look down here don't start reeling look we're down here hold your line out reel it up until this makes a little curve that looks like that stop oh you got a fish see you got a big one like a really big one look at how big that dude is you caught the biggest one in there you got a dinosaur you are not going to beat the pulling strength that a bluegill and a shell cracker has for their size they look pretty small but they pull really hard to be such a small fish they're very broad and have a lot of strength the shell crackers do tend to get a pretty good bit bigger than bluegills for the most part and that's the reason why i like to target them they're just a little bit more fun to catch and they do tend to get a little bit bigger you'll see these guys pull really hard and they have these big darting actions where it just pulls straight away from you and it's just a lot of fun and they're pretty delicious so that's a bonus all right guys i'm back out here with my sister let's see if we can get them oh i think i got a fish my slack went away i got him look shell cracker it just took a minute you having it's not a very big one female though but good fish we need to keep some of these tomorrow and throw them in the pond well she did catch one but since we didn't see you catch it i'm just going to tell everybody that it happened i caught it and let you hold it for a minute you went you casted perfect i hate i didn't have any of that i watched it so let's do it again i mean there's if you don't already have a fish there's like three fish right on top of your worm i just can't tell if they got it or not and i don't see your worm move your worm a little bit go ahead and reel yeah you got him you're in the grass now what did you get is that a shell cracker yeah yeah here don't reel them all the way up like yeah there you go yeah that's a show cracker no there's you're looking for like i see two right there one over there one right there see under the tree limb yes the dark spots where the sun's hitting that's where they're at and we just got we got here too close oh i think i got one oh it came off i threw right next to in between a bluegill and a bass one's going after it he got it i think he got it yep i got him hey it's a show cracker i got him oh man he finned me cut it out dude hey i got one it's not a very big one man he darted was gone it's really hard to get it just perfect oh got him did i get a bass out of there i did get a bass out of there little largemouth oh you do got him i can see that's a show cracker too hey that's a pretty good one there that's a male awesome you might have to yeah he'll he'll get through the weeds right there but yeah awesome yeah you need him he's fixing to get it oh he's got it oh no what did he have you're gonna hit him greg he's about to get it there was a muskrat just swim underneath him that muskrat just swam underneath you yeah he swam right there that's a big one too nice fish very pretty [Music] you got him awesome no you got a bluegill no that's him all right guys that's gonna do it for today i hope you enjoyed the video check back with me next week because the next couple of days after this me and my sister just smashed a bunch of shell crackers we caught about 40 50 fish both days two days in a row it was epic but i'm out of here you guys have a good one

Channel: Midsouth Outdoors

Views: 232,427

Keywords: Shellcracker, Bluegill, bream, spawn, nightcrawler, worm, worms, fishing, Glen Springs Lake, Tips, Tricks, How To, Locate, Memphis, TN, Tennessee, Fish, panfish, catch, catching, tons, loads, lots

Id: uWMxx1xQjIo

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2022