At our lake in north-central Minnesota we have often noticed circular areas on the lakebed, each a few feet across, where bottom muck is cleared away to reveal sand beneath. With a little research we discovered that bluegill sunfish were likely responsible, and that these circles are their nests. But we had not seen fish actually inhabiting these circles — up until this June.
In the first days of June we noticed a bluegill sunfish sticking very close to his circle-nest just a few feet to the right of our dock. Remarkably, nearly every day of June we found him in the same spot hovering in his nest and only occasionally darting out, typically to chase away other fish.
With a bit more research we learned that this is very typical behavior for a male “parental” bluegill. In fact, the reproductive strategies of male bluegills are very interesting and unusual. A comical description of bluegill behavior is given by a YouTube video titled “The Absurd Mating Strategies of the Bluegill Sunfish”.
The video tells how the male “parental” bluegills work hard building a nest to attract females, only to deal with competition from other male bluegills called “sneakers”. Rather than compete with the terrific job the video does in providing the intimate details, I’ll end this post with a few images and videos of “our” bluegill.
North MN Outdoors 