Stick500

awesome fish Mr. Special my trip to Mighty Miss down here in Iowa ended up with lots of bites but no hook-ups! Only explanation is the gars were thick where I was at- heard it from someone else that they were in the area as well

I just pulled one in on a big circle hook (chub) and could see the hook was down in it's throat. Bummed that I was going to probably kill the fish and lose my expensive hook, but when on I tugged on the line everything popped right out- the gar wasn't hooked at all!

Woohoo! I'm going out tonight (Weds.). Someone just told me that they heard on NPR that it was a special night tonite for fishing but that's all I know. Might have something to do with upcoming lunar eclipse?

I'm wondering the same thing right now Mamba. I'm down in Dubuque, IA right now and I got out after flats for the first time ever last week on the Miss. near a big hole at dusk. Using big live chubs for bait and got a hook-up pretty quick but lost him in a big snag. Then I landed a small 22-incher. Then I made a big mistake and tried to save battery power on my bait bucket and killed all my chubs before baiting up again! Finished up the night with a 32 inch gar that picked up the dead chub off the bottom. Want to go back to the same spot and try again next week as air temps hover in the high 7

Speared with a hand spear or speargun? In open water or ice house? Just curious since not many people seem to do either one of these for carp and buffs. Cool that you went the extra mile and could utilize them in such a tasty manner!

this is a bigmouth buffalo and they are native to our waters- entirely different species and family from all the carps, which are in the minnow familyy buffs are in the sucker family, but the bigmouths are filter feeders like bighead and silver carp

the way I understand it many common carp breed several times during spring and summer so there's probably always some fish during this time of the year that are between breeding that are feeding I'm still seeing lots of fat females at Tonka while snorkeling there's a new very detailed book out on carp biology for fisheries professionals and carp farmers but it costs $100! would love to get my hands on it- maybe I can get the library to buy one

hardly anything on land or water likes to eat slugs- toads probably go for them, though besides, these MN slugs are pretty puny and would be hard to gather enough to make a presentation on a hook

Wow! That's a very detailed description of suckers. Great resource- thanks for posting.

you guys bringing a boat? night bowfishing?

Keep in mind guys that just because some COs have said it's illegal, and apparently anglers have gotten tickets for it, doesn't mean it is illegal (of course it's still a hassle for anyone who gets a ticket!). The OP was simply asking "is it illegal or not?" and so far no one has been able to prove that it is indeed illegal.

from the looks of this thread, it appears that isn't the case

I always understood that you could keep fishing but I could be wrong- don't recall seeing any specific lines about that in the regs.

the shore bird feeding the sunnies chunks of bread and then nabbing them right there at the end is pretty amazing behavior for a bird!

I'm curious about how those pike net traps work. Are they baited?