SOME SAY a big shellcracker is the most mysterious fish in freshwater. Properly called a redear sunfish, it’s three times the size of a keeper bluegill, on average, and just as delicious. But it’s notoriously finicky, apt to ignore a nightcrawler threaded onto an Aberdeen hook but then inhale a redworm thrown to the same spot on the same rig the very next cast. Most of the time they hug the bottom, where they probe gravel bars for snails. When you haven’t caught one in a year, their power against light spinning tackle is startling. For a few short days late in the spring, when the weather is warm and the moon is just so, and if you’ve been a good person most of the year and hold your mouth just right, you might find shellcrackers on a bed and catch a mess of them.
One time, and only one time, I caught my daily limit of 20 shellcrackers from a single bed at a local lake. Wade Bourne