Give these tips a try when all else is failing in your bluegill game plan. Use your nose to locate bedding bluegill. A bluegill bed gives off a watermelon-like odor.

Find bluegill in pockets, sloughs and dead lakes off the main river channel on a river system. Usually bluegill use some type of bottom break to bed on, such as a point, a sandy bottom protruding from a mud bottom, a small gravel bar or an old creek channel with stumps on it.

Sound them out. Most bluegill will bed on tops of underwater humps and ridges but not in open water year after year. Using a depth finder, look from the bank to identify ridges and humps in sloughs, creeks and backwater ponds off a main lake or river in the region you're fishing. The same type of bottom breaks that hold bass also will home bluegill, but bluegill bed on top instead of on the sides or near the bases of the humps and ridges.