Live bait will probably always be the best way to catch bluegills, but if you're looking for those big, snorting bull pigs, soft plastics like the Lindy Munchie Teeny Tails and products like Berkley's Gulp! or PowerBait lines are the only way to go -- even through the ice.

Leaving that can o' worms on the dock requires a leap of faith. The issue is clear: Do you want to catch fish -- or do you want to catch big fish?

Plastics don't freeze in the winter, or die and stink in the summer, or sit cattywampus on a hook after being tested by a bluegill anytime your line's in the water. Even with bluegill metabolism at a peak for the next few months, going after these fish with a feeding presentation still requires fooling all five senses.

With the new soft plastics, you're trying to entice a strike -- behavior that bluegills are capable of even with a full belly.

Big Bill the Bluegill knows the perils of live bait. He's seen countless brothers and sisters jerked out of the picture after inhaling natural foods. That little piece of plastic pulsing inches from his nose tends to taunt, rather than alarm.

The superiority of artificials over live bait is clearly illustrated in the easiest of bluegill scenarios: fishing the spawning beds.

Selective harvest of panfish is good for almost every fishery. A management rule of thumb for ensuring balance in farm ponds involves removing 5 pounds of panfish for every pound of bass.

A major key to catching bluegills on the beds is to work your way from the outside of those moon crater clusters inward. If your ice-fishing box isn't stowed in the boat already, toss it in a compartment when you're done with this article. A little ice jig under a tiny ice-fishing float will beat the daylights out of any live-bait presentation for softwater 'gills known to man.

Ramping up this game to the optimum level means switching to a 4-weight fly rod and a little black rubber spider. The nicest thing that anybody ever said about my fly-fishing attempts was: "They have medicine that can help with all that flailing." Imagine a guy with poison ivy wearing a wool sweater and no T-shirt being attacked by a battalion of hornets: My form is somewhat more animated than that. But if the little rubber spider manages to hit the water within 3 feet of an active spawning bed, a bull 'gill will find it in seconds.

In lakes with more than 2 feet of visibility, finding bluegill beds is a simple matter of a slow cruise with the trolling motor along protected shoreline flats and in the back of coves looking for those telltale moon craters. A pair of Polaroid shades will cut glare and work as the best "fishfinder" technology available.

Because of visibility, finding spawning beds in riverine environments like the Mississippi is a little tougher. By this time of year, a large percentage of bigger bluegills will have moved out of wintering areas back in the sloughs and taken up residence near current in running sloughs and close to rocky structures like wing dams out in the main river.