In north-central North Dakota, on the border with Manitoba, lies the Turtle Mountains, a plateau rising from the surrounding prairie. It’s quite a contrast, leaving the flatlands of North Dakota for the deciduous forests and pothole lakes of the Turtle Mountains region. Simply put, the area is an angler’s paradise. Clayton Davis lives there, where some the largest purebred wild bluegills on the planet can be found. It took him awhile to be aware of this fact, but once he knew what a bluegill was and how to catch them, the fun for himself and his family and friends was just beginning.
Part of the reason that the bluegills get so large here is due to the remoteness of the area and something of a lack of local interest for bluegills. “There are not a lot of people that will travel 300 or 400 miles to catch a bluegill, so there really isn’t a lot of fishing pressure,” Davis explained. “It might be big elsewhere, but here there isn’t the same demand.”
Clayton Davis grew up in a fishing family and when ice season came, the family tradition was fishing northern pike. It was in those formative years, while devouring every bit of information that he could about fishing, that he picked up on something unique about the local area. “We were buying every walleye book and magazine we could and fishing for walleyes like you’d see the guys on TV doing, like Jason Mitchell or Dave Genz. As the years went on, we’d start seeing other fishing shows and learning how to target different species,” Davis recalled. “Our dad bought this underwater camera, and my brother and I would sit in the permanent house out on the ice on the local lake, cooking soup and visiting with my dad. We’d drop that camera down and see these big bluegills swimming through. We’d put minnows down in front of their face, not knowing what a bluegill was and not knowing how to catch them. I laugh at it now. Those big bluegills would swim up, look at our minnows, and swim away. And we’d be disgusted! As the fishing itch continued to grow,” Davis continued, “we started watching these television shows and a few of them featured bluegill trips, and it reminded us of those fish that we’d see on the underwater camera. We read magazines and watched bluegill shows and finally figured out how to catch them. We knew they were big, but what’s funny is we didn’t know how big. We didn’t know these fish were world class.”
Figuring out how to catch them took some time, but eventually Clayton and his friends figured out a few patterns. “We have a group that fishes together and believes in catch and release,” Davis said. “We pretty much target high-traffic areas. On some of these lakes, there are weed beds that stick out in our heads. I call them high-traffic areas because they are known to produce big fish.”
Davis’ high-traffic areas have substrates that hold standing weeds from the summer, either submerged or emergent. Clayton says green weeds are especially important. “It doesn’t matter the species — perch, pike, bass, walleyes, bluegills,” Davis explained. “They all hold in the green weeds in the winter.”
Davis’ team has built up a catalog of these high-traffic spots and picked up on another interesting site fidelity pattern. “Over the years, we’ve found that the spawning grounds are good places to try at early and late ice,” Clayton added. “If we don’t find them there, we’ll kick out to deeper water. One guy can drill out in the basin, another guy might try a rocky point, another might try around an island, and just try and find fish. If we can’t find them, it’s a switch to search mode. Once you catch one, it’s time to converge on the spot and drill it out. If there’s one, there will be more.”
By spreading out, Davis’ team works efficiently to comb the water for ‘gills and keys in on the areas the fish are using. Davis recommends starting shallow before working deep. “We are usually fishing in less than 8 feet of water,” he noted. Basin bluegill anglers be advised — your technique rarely works in the Turtle Mountains. “I get guys that come out here that want to fish a basin bite,” Davis recalled. “It’s not to say that it never happens, but it’s pretty rare. It’s more that the fish are tied to vegetation.”
Turtle Mountain bluegills do have a tendency to be tough to find, but a little patience goes a long way. Clayton is encouraged that he will get on a big fish bite if he runs into perch in the afternoon, ahead of a glorious sunset bite. “If we found perch that were 9, 10, 11 inches, we didn’t move, because eventually the bluegills would move in, usually right at dusk. You wouldn’t catch the bluegills until that point. You just had to hold out hope that you were on the right perch school and the bluegills would follow.”
Like a lot of experienced and informed hardcore bluegill anglers, Davis knows the importance of catch and release. “We made some mistakes,” he recalled. “We kept some big fish that I regret now. Everybody learns. We learned too, how important those big fish were to spawning and passing on their genetics.” Now when Davis and friends reel up a trophy bluegill, after a quick photo, it’s put back in the lake to guard spawning nests and pass along its fast growth and large body size potential.
After Davis got bit by the bluegill bug, it didn’t take him long to start scouring the local scene for gigantic ‘gills. He began reviewing the North Dakota Game and Fish Department Stocking Records. In his mind, if half of the lakes in the Turtle Mountains have bluegills and the one that he was consistently fishing was putting out such large fish, there had to be big fish in other lakes. “Our curiosity got the best of us and when we started fishing the other lakes; we found huge bluegills. Your chances of catching a 10- to 12-inch bluegill in this region are as good as anywhere in the world.”
Clayton has also become a fan of high-performance fishing equipment, and for good reason. He’s dealing with some of the most discriminating and largest bluegills on Earth.
“I use a Thorne Brothers spring bobber rod because it has so much backbone and it has a great tip,” Davis noted. “When you set the hook, you want to drive it in pretty good. So you really need both — bite detection and some ‘umph’ to drive the hook home in a bluegill’s small mouth. An 11-inch bluegill will bite unbelievably light.”
Davis articulates the delicacy and patience needed with these giant bluegills. “Almost every time, you’ve got to let them double clutch,” Davis said. It’s the perfect description for the bluegills’ tendency to taste a bait and avoid the hook. They can quickly suck and blow a bait, so waiting for the double clutch is key. “Some bluegills will come up and slam it, but those are usually smaller fish. The big bluegills will inspect a bait forever before biting. You have to be patient and wait for that second dip, it seems like it takes forever and it’s painstaking!”
Davis favors Pflueger President reels, which he describes as smooth and great performing even in the coldest conditions served up in extreme northern North Dakota. “I know some guys shy away from spinning reels to avoid line twist,” Davis said. “But it doesn’t seem to be an issue here. If they are going to bite, they are going to bite. I always use a barrel swivel to reduce twist; I put it up 12 to 16 inches. Once in a while, we will hook a pike. A pike will mess up your line. Even if I have to retie, I won’t have all of that twist in my line.”
Davis likes Clam Drop Jigs because they are super heavy and get down fast. He considers himself more of a plastics man, although he mentioned that his group will use waxworms, maggots and perch eyes, which are legal for use in North Dakota, for live bait. “As far as plastics, as long as I have a motor oil color, I’ll throw it on and catch fish,” Davis said. “We prefer tungsten jigs and use 2-pound test line in monofilament. We love chartreuse glow. It seems to work better than any other color we use.”
Turtle Mountain Lakes have the right amount of productivity to get excellent zooplankton and macroinvertebrate hatches that fuel body growth, low enough angling harvest to keep a tremendous top-end size on bluegills, and the right mix of predation between pike, bass and walleyes to thin the bluegill population and maintain fast growth. It’s the right combination of remote location and angling challenge that make big bluegills a sustainable resource, and one that only comes with hard work. Davis agrees. “It may seem like we catch a lot of big bluegills, but what people don’t see is that we spend a lot of time on these lakes. We can go a number of days or even weeks to get one big one. These lakes are tough to fish and people need to remember that when they come up here. But they also need to keep the faith; they have a better chance at a trophy here than anywhere else in the world.
— Scott Mackenthun has been writing about the outdoors since 2005. You can follow him on Instagram @scottmackenthun and on Twitter @ScottyMack31.
