First Bowfin

[wildcatcreek]

At least I think it's a bowfin. I've never seen one except on here. My buddy reeled this in yesterday. Weighed right around 4 lbs.

[Neighbor_guy]

Very subdued colors, but definately a dogfish/bowfin.

I bet that thing put up a bit of a fight.

[bronzeback]

that thing is a chunk for its length.

has the genetics to be a monster, hope you let it swim.

[wildcatcreek]

Always

[riverrat56]

Nice fish!

A friend of mine has been seeing quiet a few of these guys up shallow spawning, he however is trying his hardest to stick an arrow in them.

[DEADhead]

nice doggie there wildcat!

[MN BassFisher]

I run into a decent amount of Bowfin up at my cabin, that seems to be the only place I catch em. They put up a heck of a fight! A lot of people hate catching them, but I like it. Besides the fact that they can wreck a lot of lures and bend a lot of hooks with their strong bite. If you catch one on a lure with multiple treble hooks, it's not a good idea to net it. They roll when they get in the boat and the trebles get all tangled in the net. I have spent 15 minutes trying to undo the mess, but I still like em.

[crazyice]

Awesome fish!

[KTapper]

Nice Doggy!

[HuskerBen]

Nice. You never forget your first...

[carpmanjake]

Nice. You never forget your first...

so very true! i can still picture my first fin, tailwalking in the current. i have a big framed 8x10 picture of her with the spinner i caught her on hanging off the frame.

it was not even fishable after i landed her. she completely destroyed it!

that was the start of a life long love for bowfin

[gopher_nation]

We were in the shallows bass fishing this past weekend and saw one on the bottom. I told my buddy to cast to it and sure enough what we thought was a bass was a bowfin about that same size. It was neon green on its belly though. Wasn't a pleasant surprise for us!

[carpmanjake]

We were in the shallows bass fishing this past weekend and saw one on the bottom. I told my buddy to cast to it and sure enough what we thought was a bass was a bowfin about that same size. It was neon green on its belly though. Wasn't a pleasant surprise for us!

that would be a spawning male, hope you let him go!

Bowfin definately need more respect than they get...

[Cooter]

I would love to target dogfish but haven't found any lakes close by with good populations of them - believe its tough to fish for them unless you got a bunch of them. Think in-fisherman did an article recommending using cutbait bluegills. Nice fish in the photo!

[Ralph Wiggum]

I talked to a gentleman on a local fishing pier the other day. He was getting quite a few, and he was telling me how delicious they are.

[carpmanjake]

ralph, bowfin are good eating, but they will make your kitchen smell a little funny.

also, bowfin eggs are often used as a subsitute for caviar! look up bowfin caviar on google images. its pretty crazy

[Crawlerman]

I've only seen a bowfin ONCE, it was caught by someone fishing off the launch on Linwood lake.

There are a number of lakes in the metro where the DNR has caught Bowfin in their surveys. Along with Shortnose gar, they seem to be one of the hardest fish to "target" because they are never a dominant predator species, much lower in population then say bass or northerns. Same goes with Gar which seem to be indengonus to the St Croix/ Mississippi/ Minnesota rivers and makes them even harder to target.

I've caught one sturgeon off the St Croix, a very small one- maybe 2lbs at best. To date this is the only "prehistoric" fish I have caught. The bowfin and gar still elude me.

I'd love to catch one sometime, just so it can be crossed off the list of fish I haven't caught. That would be a neat ambition- to catch every species of catchable fish that resides in Minnesota waters in a lifetime; however crazy of an ambition that would be.

[StillwaterAaron]

Crawlerman.....There are a number of us that keep photo lifelists of every species we catch. It is a non-traditional way of looking at fishing. I have dedicated my fishing to the hunt of new species but once you get up in numbers the targets get much tougher. It also depends on your location. You must travel to catch all the species.

[Maashkinoozhe]

Yes - keeping a "Lifelist" makes fishing more interesting - you get much better at identification and you develop a greater appreciation for all the different species. I, too, am trying to expand my Lifelist - luckily, I'm just really starting so I still have quite a number of fish to catch that are available in the metro area. Oddly enough, one of the fish I still haven't landed yet is the carp. So far this year I've added Silver Redhorse, Brown Trout and Rainbow Trout (been fishing a little in the SE part of the state).

Dave