Fish with a lamprey attached to it

[tomasz20]

caught my first fish with a lamprey on it and also got a 35 inch pike on a salamander. 
 

 

[leech~~]

Nice fish but why did you throw the lamprey back?  Their going to end up killing your nice fishery there.

[Mike89]

good question

[Hawg]

I caught a walleye on LOW with one attached. It fell off in the boat, man can those things squirm! One of the ugliest creatures I've ever seen, scared the bajesus out of me.

[JBMasterAngler]

That's a native lamprey. They are harmless to fish. Only sea lampreys kill fish.

[tomasz20]

yeah this was a native lamprey. they don't kill the host fish only the invasive sea lampreys do.

[Hawg]

But it has the ability to kill humans! If one of those stuck to me I would die of an immediate heart attack!

[leech~~]

16 hours ago, JBMasterAngler said:

That's a native lamprey. They are harmless to fish. Only sea lampreys kill fish.

 

Not sure I'm sold on that. How would they eat-suck on a host and not harm them by making a nice hole in them?

[JBMasterAngler]

I meant harmless in the sense they don't kill fish. With that being said, I'm sure the host fish would prefer that it not have a lamprey attached to it, but at the end of the day, the fish will live...literally. Lampreys are very common in the upper St. Croix River system. I see them attached to redhorse all the time, which makes sense, as redhorse are by far the most abundant fish in the system. If the lampreys haven't "crashed" that system after several thousand years of coexistence, I'm liking gamefishes' chances for the next several thousand years also 

[Wanderer]

Whew! That's good news, eh?

[ANYFISH2]

We see the silver and the chestnut lamprey in a number of Minnesota watersheds.

 

Have caught quite a few sturgeon and walleye in the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods with lampreys attatched.

[Greenbackhunter]

All four species of lamprey are protected in Manitoba. They are not to be destroyed, and are not invasive. Kill all the carp you want... those are invasive and destructive. 

[walleye44]

I thought all lampreys were bad. I know on Lake Superior we were told to get rid of them in the past!

 

[JBMasterAngler]

Sea lampreys are bad! They are not native to Lake Superior, and they do kill fish!