Whatcha catchn’?

[WV Sawmiller]

   I am fishing for Flatheads and they will not bite anything but a live bait so beaver tail is out for me. I catch channel and a few blue cats as they like live bait too and they might bite it.

    I have seen Tom Oar on the Mountain Man TV series make knife sheaths out of beaver tail skin but I had never heard of any other use for it.

[beenthere]

Video of skinning out a beaver tail.
Beaver Tail to Beaver Leather, How To. - YouTube

[SawyerTed]

Once in a while, when I want to learn a new area, I hire a guide or book a charter. 

Yesterday we learned about the lower Neuse River and mouth to the sound.  

Our target was big drum.  It wasn't meant to be so we fished for sea trout and "puppy" drum (NC vernacular for slot limit drum). 



The trout were 16-19".  The drum, on top, was 20" of so.  

[SawyerTed]

Fished today, caught nada, zero, zip...but enjoyed the day until we were caught in a storm.  

We found a dock on a creek off of South River, tied up and waited under a vacation cottage until the storm passed.

The run across the river was 6 miles.  We made it back before the next storm hit but it was a cool ride. 

It poured rain until we got to our condo. 

[SawyerTed]

Got away to the coast for three days of Speckled Trout fishing with two cousins I've not seen in many years.  We are all within 18 months in age.  

It took awhile to find some fish.  Once we did there was nonstop catching!   We caught 300 fish in 3 days.  Only thing is 270 were shorts.  



 

[firefighter ontheside]

I took dad to a creek I've been to before, but a spot I hadn't gone to before.  At first it looked like we wouldn't catch anything.  Then dad had something on and lost it.  A moment later I had something on and landed it.  It was about a 15" Rainbow.  Dad caught one a little smaller.  I ended up catching 3 more.  All of the fish were caught in the same pool.  We didn't find anything anywhere else.  Dad was not able to walk in the creek very well and was very winded when we walked back to the truck.  I suspect that will be the last time I will take dad stream fishing.  I'm glad we went though.


 

 

[Ron Scott]

Nice!

[caveman]

My long-time teaching partner retired last year.  He guides fishing trips at an exclusive resort and fishes recreationally on most of his days off.  He has been asking me to go with him most days this week to fish for specks.  They smashed them earlier in the week.  Today we went to a different lake than they have been fishing.  We caught a good mess, but we did not murdercate them.  We will have fish for supper tomorrow night.

I walked out of the house this morning wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt.  It was comfortable and I even ran the AC in the truck on the way to the ramp.  It was cloudy and foggy for a good portion of the day, but we had to put on our sunglasses around 10 or 11.  The ski boats and the skiers were annoying, but the water was 70° so we really could not blame them for being out there jumping off the ramp, running the slalom course or working on their tricks.  

We caught a lot of bass, but this lake has historically had a bunch of small bass.  The ones we caught today, roughly 20, were too skinny to mess with.  I only brought one home for supper.  

The lake we fished today used to have only a few houses and a citrus grove around it.  This morning I got lost and wound up at a Publix supermarket when trying to get to the lake.  I have fished and hunted here for over 35 years.  I put the ramp into my phone's map app and was able to find the lake.  There are now warehouses, apartments, houses and so many other changes that it was like I was in a foreign land.

I do not know where the money and people are coming from, but I don't consider it progress.  

 

 

[SawyerTed]

That's a nice mess of "specks".  Sweet!

[caveman]

I did not get to go on this trip.  My son in law took my grandson on a couple of hour long walk into the swamp (it is much drier than normal for this time of the year) to a pond he found at the headwaters of the Hillsborough River.  They fished for a while and caught some bluegills, a speck and a good bass.  My SIL said a big mudfish kept trying to eat the fish on the stringer.  He had to make a fence with small logs in the water to keep it away from them. 

I am glad they had the opportunity to get out in the woods together.   


 

[WV Sawmiller]

    Great picture but I guess you know very few of us here on the Forum are "cultured" enough to know what a mudfish is.  ;) :D

[caveman]

I've got a couple of good SIL's, but this one went way up on the list.  Taking a four-year-old on a several hour hike to catch fish, knowing he'll be carrying him out on his shoulders is commendable.  I've hunted this area years ago, but I did not find this water hole.  I hope to be able to go in there with them one of these days. 

We are quite a bit drier than most years, so it is a bit easier to access this spot.  I need to get another picture from my SIL, some of those cypress knees were nearly 4' tall. 

[KEC]

So, what-the-heck is a mudfish?

[Ianab]

Looking at the area, I'd guess some big fat catfish?

Locally a mudfish is an species of small galaxid. It's called a Mudfish because it's one of those "water optional" fish. It lives in swampy areas, and if things get a bit dry it wriggles into the mud under an old log, and just waits for it to rain. Totally unrelated to this thread, but one of those interesting "did you know" sort of asides.

Brown mudfish: NZ native fish

[SawyerTed]

Here 600 miles from mr caveman, a mudfish is a Bowfin. 

[caveman]

Ted is right.  A mudfish is a bowfin.  I never have been hungry enough to eat one.  I used to catch them when fishing for something else, usually bass or panfish.  I'd smack them with a paddle and hang them by their gills on nearby cypress knees.  They are aggressive and will readily eat other fish, cut bait and about anything else.

[SawyerTed]

Bowfin are aggressive and eat about anything that moves in the water and some stuff that doesn't.   It doesn't take much effort to hook a hungry one.  Here they get 15 pounds of so.  They have a swim bladder that allows them to breathe air out of water. 

Some people think they have caught a snakehead when they catch a bowfin.  In northern areas where burbot or eelpout are common bowfin get confused with them too.

They do look a bit weird, prehistoric and are related to gar. 

https://www.fieldandstream.com/conservation/bowfin-vs-snakehead/?amp

[barbender]

 There are few disappointments in life as great as thinking you've finally got that 10 lb walleye that will give you great esteem among your fishing buddies, only to pull an 8 lb bowfin (dogfish as they ate known here) out of the dark water. I could hear every fisherman on the lake groan over that one 😂

One of my buddies was getting into snorkeling a bit, and one lake he went to there was a dogfish that he got to know a little bit. Every time he went snorkeling at this spot, that dogfish would come greet him and follow him around. It seemed to have enough intelligence or curiosity to want to know what he was up to🙂

I wouldn't know how to tell Eelpout (burbot) and bowfin apart without looking at pictures or something, they both ugly in the same way. Eelpout is good eating though, at least in part. I've only tried it once, much of the flesh is mush but the tail is very firm, white meat. I would compare it to the cheek meat of a walleye, if anyone has tried that. Firm, somewhat chewy without the grain that most fish meat has.

[barbender]

 I never did document our trip out West this past fall, but one highlight was getting our son out for a bit of fly fishing.

I don't know why I love fly fishing so much, it would be a heck of a lot easier to catch fish with an ultralight and spinners, but it's just not the same.

It can be pretty frustrating, with fly line tangled in sticks and willows, back casts in the willows, that kind of stuff. But one evening, we found a gem of a beaver pond at the head of the Wind River up by Togwotee Pass.



 

They weren't big. At all🙂 But that first trout on the fly is a milestone, no matter the size-



 

We ended the evening by getting into some native cutthroat. Again, not big (trout especially look bigger when you catch them, and then shrink for pictures😁) The trout were feeding aggressively, we were having a blast!

 

 

I was born in Sheridan, Wyoming. My Mom's side of the family is all out there, and I got to spend a lot of time out there as a kid. Part of my heart has always been in the West, I almost moved out to work for my Aunt and Uncle when I was 19. If I would've, I doubt I would've ever came back. I love Minnesota too, but fishing mountain streams, the big game hunting, the beautiful mountain views...it gets in you!

 

 

[WV Sawmiller]

    Dad grew up in central Fla around the Suwannee River and down there they called them mudfish so I knew what Cavey was talking about. Where I grew up in N. Fla people called them a Cottonfish because they were supposed to taste like cotton. Over in Mississippi and Louisiana I think the the Cajuns and such call them Cypress Bass or Choupique (Shoe-Pick). Most people considered them trash fish because they were very bony and lived in pretty stagnant water where more desirable fish can't live. I have heard of people grinding them up to make fish balls out of them. During the depression and such Dad said people would eat them or anything else they could get.

   My old mentor told the tale of high water flooding a field and when the water went down a bunch of fish were stranded in a low spot. The neighbors got together and met up with hoes and rakes and some poultry netting and such and they muddied the water to make the fish come to the surface and they seined them out. They got a lot of bream, a few catfish and bass and one big Bowfin. There was a preacher in the group who was new to the area and he kept bragging about how pretty the bowfin was. They made equal piles of the fish and drew names to see who got which pile but set it up so the preacher would get the bowfin. When he got it he was so excited but they said later on when he cooked it and tried to eat it the longer he chewed the bigger it got. When he got done he looked around and told the folks around him and said "Well, when I read the story in the Bible about how the Lord fed the multitude with 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fishes I wondered what kind of fish he fed them but now I know."

[SawyerTed]

I used to love mountain trout fishing.   A good number of our streams in NC are hatchery supported/stocked streams.   Even here in Stokes County we have a "put and take" section of the Dan River. 

It wasn't unusual to leave after teaching school and fish the river until dark.  Many a limit of trout came home with me On those afternoons. 

Often my wife's 70 something uncle was my fishing partner.   

On one occasion he wanted to fish Price Lake on the Blue Ridge Parkway on opening day of trout season.  We got up early and drove the 2 1/2 hours west to be there when legal fishing hours started.

It was cold and spitting snow and sleet. But we caught fish.  Uncle Drexel caught his limit first.  He was cold and headed back without his stringer.  I was another half hour finishing off my limit. 

So as I was walking out to the truck, I met two game wardens.   Of course h was carrying two stringers of 7 fish each.  They did what they do, detained me, questioned me and fortunately listened to my story. 

One walked back to my truck to verify my story.  The officer spoke to Drexel who sitting in MY truck.  Drexel looked me up and down and told the officer he had no idea who was! 

They both turned and looked at me the both burst out laughing.   Apparently Drexel knew the guy and they set me up perfectly.  They said the look on my face was priceless!  :D

[Magicman]

PatD and I set a couple of trotlines out in the Mississippi River backwater and after we finished baiting the 2nd line we ran the first line.  Wow, about a 10-12lb Channel cat so we knew that we were in for action.  When we went back to run and pull the lines we could see the lines tightening and jerking. 

Both lines were loaded with Bowfins, except we called them Jack Grinnels.  No catfish.  Surely someone would want them so we started stopping at houses.  :  I was thinking that we would have to put them under our corn seed when we planted like the Indians did, but we finally found a taker.  We later found out that no one leaves the river with Jack fish.

[WV Sawmiller]

Lynn,

   I assume what you are calling Jackfish is a Chain pickerel. Is that the case where you live or are you calling a bowfin a Jackfish?

   At least that is what we called chain pickerel in N. Fla.. I always thought they were fairly tasty except they were very bony. Bowfin are like possums IMHO - times ain't got bad enough I ever tried to eat one.

   I caught one in a big gravel borrow pit one time because it kept tail-walking like a bass and I thought it had a broken off lure in its jaw it was trying to throw. It was exhausted and sculled over and scooped it up with my landing net. Turned out it had about a 1 lb crappie hung in its throat and could not swallow it nor could it spit it out with the fins spread like they were.

[Magicman]

I referred to the Jack Grinnel (Bowfin) as a Jack fish.  I have no idea where the "Jack" came from, local I guess.

There are many names: Bowfin

[WV Sawmiller]

    Yeah it is funny the different local names people have for the same fish and a bowfin has about as many as I can think of. Where I grew up a crappie was called a chinquapin. I never heard them called that anywhere else. Further South in central Fla in Caveman country they call them Specks which I think is short for speckled perch. Where I was raised a Speck was a speckled trout from the Gulf.

    We used to fish with bush hooks on the Suwannee River in central Fla for catfish and Dad used shrimp for bait. If we ran out of shrimp he'd buy mullet and we'd use it for cut bait. We'd catch catfish but also a lot of what we considered trash fish like bowfin (Mudfish there), gars, eels and turtles. We caught more trash fish with mullet than shrimp but maybe more catfish if the truth be told. Dad found out about using soap (Camay or Ivory) and only channel catfish and blue cats would bite that and no more "trash" fish so he was hooked on soap after that. I won't use soap here as I also would not catch flathead catfish on it as they want a live bait and are my preferred catch.

   I put some bush hooks (limblines) out in the headwaters of the New River in Jacksonville NC and was running them in my canoe. The water was up and I was mostly fishing the back water. I started with mullet and caught lots of catfish and trash fish. I'd keep a trash fish every day and cut it up and use it for the next days bait and it worked as well as the mullet.

    We never ate them but the meat off the eels was a pretty as any channel cat and I'd cut a gar open at the belly, cut the ribs to expose the backstrap which was a long boneless roll of meat as pretty a chink of meat as I ever saw and I'd use that for bait so my fishing was self sustaining. That worked good till either I ran out of freezer space or the water went back down to normal levels. I'd catch a few fish then but nothing like in the backwaters. I remember when the water went down I'd have to get out of my canoe and walk up on the bank and untie/retrieve lines that I had caught fish on the day before.

    We had a fish fry here yesterday for the retired teachers group my wife worked with and had a great meal and a good time. Everybody took a take-out box (Clamshell) full of fish and grits home and I should finish the leftovers at lunch today.