The fishing thread

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

The water in both the keys and Miami area was astonishingly clear. The keys also have no waves to speak of for miles around. The kids were in love and didn't want to leave. 

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

Probably a Roseate Spoonbill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roseate_Spoonbill_-_Myakka_River_State_Park.jpg

In reply to jharry3 :

It could've been one of them (pink in color). They're not supposed to be here, either.

We went to the neighborhood lake yesterday and the 7 year old caught several bluegill and a nice white crappie. I caught nothing except for well over 100' of fishing line spread over three different lines, including one ~40' long, very thick fluoro line, and each of them had some sort of rig on the end. A nice nearly new large brass spinner, a rubber spin bait rig, and a worm rig. I can't figure out why people give up so easily on their line once it's snagged. It really trashes up the water to have so much line in it. The only one that seriously fought me was the fluoro line and it just took a bit of an angle and some steady firm pulling. Another one of the lines was so long they must have cast from the other side of the lake.

I swear you could easily outfit a very full tackle box just recovering other people's abandoned gear. In fact, we kind of have.

The trash is another issue. You hope people are mostly like yourself and enjoy nature but I can't actually believe that with the number of worm tubs and empty tackle packages and such that I find lying around.

Although the crappie may not be huge, I'm pretty pleased with it - she caught it with no input from me. In fact I was kind of micromanaging her - not on purpose - and she asked me to go check on the other poles. HA! Then a few minutes later - bam - nice crappie.

A rare example where I took my boat out of the water at the end of the day and did the old "One Last Cast," and it actually worked.



Different day, got an 18" smallmouth on top water.

Then my brother got a 19" fish and was smug about it.



The general vibe of the fishing trips:

You never know what you're going to get when fishing. My 7 year old caught a little bluegill then a water snake took a liking to it and snatched it. Unfortunately for the snake the hook came out of the bluegill and hooked the snake. She reeled it in and was super excited. I got to figure out how to unhook a snake that's got the hook all the way in its mouth. Turns out a pair of hemostats gently pressed on its mouth encourages a snake to open up. Released back into the water unharmed. It was about 4 feet long give or take and very strong. 
 

then we spotted something orange - something that doesn't belong in a lake in Ohio - and I caught it on a small circle hook with bread:

Yes I believe that's an orange African cichlid, someone's aquarium fish probably outgrown its tank. It's about 10" long and beautiful. If we had a bucket with us I would have taken it home and tried to find a home for it. It's not going to live through the winter here. I released it back to the lake and will try again today with a bucket and aerator on hand. 

That's certainly an interesting day on the water!

I think that might be a Midas Chiclid, from Central America. Cool catch. 

As for the snake... I do not like danger noodles. That would be a big nope to the nope rope for me. 

If I can get the kids settled down we're going back to the lake with a bucket and bubbler to try to rescue the cichlid. He's such a pretty fish it seems a shame to let it die this winter. 

We have a ton of Mayan Cichlids here and they are fun to catch. Here's a bass from the canal beside the house a couple months ago. 

We spotted the cichlid again but I couldn't get him to take my bait. Maybe I trained him about hooks, maybe his mouth still hurts. We'll try again!

@grover: nice bass!

grover said:

We have a ton of Mayan Cichlids here and they are fun to catch. Here's a bass from the canal beside the house a couple months ago. 

what bait are y'all throwin'??? way nice bass....congrats!!!

Just loaded up on gear so me and my 5 year old can start fishing. Been 20+ years for me! Going tomorrow 

Kiddos first time fishing. She did a faceplant in the parking lot when she saw the fishing pole and got too excited, and there was some blood and a ton of tears.... she quickly got over it though! At 2.5 years old, she is getting help with literally every aspect... except the fun, she had that part down exactly right without any involvement from dad or grandma or grandpa. 

 

Just used a crawler on a jig head with a bobber. Pumpkinseed or pumpkinseed hybrid here. Only one we caught but it was about a 10 minute trip on our way out of town after the windiest weekend I can remember meant there was no fishing happening Friday-Sunday.

In reply to mtn :

So awesome! The smile tells it all. My kiddos had a heck of a weekend fishing. A friend of theirs that had wanted to catch fish but failed to so far finally made it to our place and we walked down to the lake. With some guidance he was landing bluegills like a pro. He wanted to catch bass too but the summer heat has really slowed down the bass catching in that lake. Then randomly we ran into them today and they joined us in our new creek chub fishing spot and he landed a few nice ones. 
 

But!! Today my 7 year old set a new personal best on a 9" creek chub which is just massive for a chub. It was a good fighter and she was stoked to have caught this monster that I had told her about previously. I had spotted it on a walk when I gradually tore up, balled up, and tossed in a whole loaf of bread in a little creek. Eventually this thing came out of the tunnel nearby and was terrorizing all the little chubs. I asked her if she wanted to target it and she said hey definitely. Today she was patient and skilled and casting into the tunnel and despite poor visibility (heavy rains this morning) she nailed that fish. It was super impressive. 

sorry for the bad pic, chubs are next to impossible to hang on to and we were hemmed in by some brush on one side and a swift creek on the other, perched on a concrete wall near the freeway. Quite a spot but dang it has the goods. 
 

then on the way back we stopped by a spot we've seen a few carp at but failed at catching them. I was ravenously hungry and needed to eat but we still had some worm on a tiny hook and 4 pound test. I said - let's just set the drag light and try. She gave it a few casts but the creek/puddle has a ton of brush around and over it so I finally offered to cast. I tossed it out there and a carp sucked it up right away. I handed her the rod and made sure to just coach her as best as I could and she landed this beast- again on 4 pound test and probably a #6 hook:

19" long and probably closing on 4 pounds. Nice fish. It was beautiful in person. I've been wanting to try a carp with this curry recipe I have but the water this fish came out of is mostly freeway runoff so I'm not on board with eating out of it. It's got black sediment on the bottom and often gets quite a bit of algae if it doesn't rain for a while so I think that's the wise choice. We let it go back to the puddle/creek. But she was beyond psyched to have a new species and a new biggest fish. 

Ok, time to dust this thread off again.

Tight lines when you get out there!

We caught some nice trout in local ponds lately and I realized that cleaning fish while crouched next to a cooler with a cutting board on top just straight up sucks. Then I remembered I had a nice counter height stainless steel table in my shop that's been masquerading as a shelf for about 8 years and I cleaned it off and set it up next to a hose bib in the back yard. SUCCESS:

Of course that knife is not my filleting knife, it's my beheading knife. But I tried it out on some fish and man it's really, really nice to be able to stand to clean fish and not worry about the mess inside. Since then we caught another couple trout and were given a couple by a fellow angler who didn't want his. We had a delicious trout meal on Saturday.

My now 8 year old's spincasting reel, which is coming up on probably 3 years old, had seen so much use that the line had worn a groove in the dome that the line slides over and it kept it from wanting to cast. We spend an hour or so Friday morning going over it with first 150 then 220 sandpaper then 0000 steel wool front and back and polished it up really nicely. Well that thing casts like a dream now! We then went to a local park's trout stocking event and she caught a nice rainbow trout and I caught one on my rig. We went back the next day and caught a couple more and then I caught a smallmouth in the river with her pole, that was a blast! All on rooster tails.

A couple of the kid's friends came over Sunday wanting to fish. It had cooled off a ton, down to about 40 degrees, but we tried anyway. They kept count and managed to land 22 bluegill and kept saying how much fun they had. It's pretty satisfying introducing kids to fishing. As spring heats up I bet we'll get them back out fishing soon.

I spent three hours fishing around the Scioto river today and caught nothing and didn't even get a bite. It was beautiful and the weather was great for it, though. On the way home I decided to check out a spot that I'd heard had good fishing since they removed a bunch of low head dams a few years ago. "Just ten minutes," I said. Shortly after getting there I saw a flash of silver in the river and figured it was a carp. I was casting a rooster tail and figured, well, sometimes carp will take a rooster tail. About a half dozen casts later and  BLAM I got a big hit and it was on. It was running out drag and fighting me pretty good. I landed it - sans net since I just brough two pre-rigged poles and nothing else - and it was not a carp.

19.5" Saugeye. Heck of a figher, and a new species for me. I headed home, well within the ten minutes I allotted myself.

In reply to dculberson :

Nice fish and good work on the cleaning set up

Yesterday after work I set the minnow trap in the creek behind our house. The 8 year old came home about 1.5 hours later and we checked it and had a nice dozen or so perfect crappie bait sized chubs. I asked her if she wanted to go fishing in the morning and she said 'YES!!' This morning at 6am I asked her if she still wanted to go fishing and she about shot out of the bed. We walked down to the local lake and targeted crappie with a chub under a float while she was casting a rooster tail. She's getting really good at casting the spinning rod! The chub float started going under and like an idiot I grabbed it. I lost whatever it was, but she finished her rooster tail cast and took over and sent the chub back out. Fish took it again but lost it again. Cast the chub out again, and a few seconds later it was on! She landed a nice ~11-12" rainbow trout.
 

Now, we'd decided on catch and release this morning, but one look at that rainbow and she said "I know we were going to let them go but he looks so delicious!" Who can say no to that. I filled a bucket and we kept it. I landed a nice 11" crappie and decided since we're keeping one fish might as well keep more. We went back and forth on landing fish, and her third fish was a beautiful Fish Ohio rock bass, just over 9".
 

She also landed a nice 10.5" crappie.
 

I let one dink crappie (well, just over 9") go and we let the rock bass go so all told we went home with three crappie and the trout. I did the cleaning, making me a little late to the office this morning, but dinner (today or tomorrow) should make it worth it.

Nothing hit on the rooster tails we were tossing. We got a few follows and one nibble by a crappie but otherwise everything was on the chubs. Overall it was a great spring fishing morning!!

dculberson said:

Nothing hit on the rooster tails we were tossing. We got a few follows and one nibble by a crappie but otherwise everything was on the chubs. Overall it was a great spring fishing morning!!

Since fish are cold-blooded, they're more lethargic the colder it is. If you slow down your retrieve, it might be enough to get them to actually go for it. And on that note, I've heard that the Rooster Tails need a higher speed to spin than the other popular option, Panther Martin. 90% of the time it probably wouldn't matter, but it could be impacting it in the cooler Spring waters.

That said, if I know chubs are working I wouldn't try another spinner if the first isn't working, I'd just keep using chubs.

The Mepps Aglia spinner also spins at very slow speed.

I got out fishing with my ultralight rod a bit while walking on a greenway next to a very small creek. I got some small panfish and a few 6" creek chubs and it was *good* just to feel something tugging on the line.

The creek is a direct, connected tributary to a place I fish for bigger things, so I think I have a great spot to catch some bait. 

Got out a bit for some low key, low stress bank fishing today with a buddy of mine. Got one worth photographing. It's not the biggest bowfin, but it bit on the small rod with 8 pound test. I'm glad I got it in- they have teeth and usually break lighter line.

Also caught this one while getting bait. It looks like a Northern Hog Sucker. I looked it up... they're not supposed to be here.

We went way up in the mountains to fish some very small water for tiny brook trout on ultralight tackle. It was fun, and also great exercise.