Re: NANFA-- Freckled Madtom Eating Behavior

Todd Crail (farmertodd_at_buckeye-express.com)
Thu, 25 Mar 2004 00:27:31 -0500

I totally agree Moon. My favorite tip to my terminal tackle (lead head or
floater) is a big fat, recently seined and locally operated, live, fiesty
and ready-to-rock, Pimephales notatus. :)

I've also caught channel cats on crankbaits (shad, crawfish, minnow, doesn't
seem to matter). Talk about a mess. Too many sharp things in one place!
And there's no smell involved there... That's their lateral line "backup"
kicking into primary sense.

I think the points about their olfactory keeness is that they _are_ one big
nose, sniffing out whatever comes their way, rather than bothering with
organs that require light to work.

My comment about them as a family being the premier predators of North
America serves this... A kingly fish would only desire a kingly meal, and a
fresh live one at that. But they're also incredible opportunists, and
aren't too haughty to take some left over scraps, thus adding to their
success as a family. Unfortunately, someone got the idea somewhere that
this was more like begging and have tainted the king's image as a scrounge.

But that's fine with me. They can leave their stinky messes on the bottom,
getting all hung up, while I go through a whole pool or run and catch every
feeding fish :) And that's no joke... When we don't have anything happen
for 10 minutes we move up or down to the next run and a hot bite starts all
over again.

Those are the days when you close your eyes at the end and all you can see
is your rod tip twitch and then set. Man I could use one of those days
right now. Thank goodness Spring seems to be setting in here now.

Todd

----- Original Message -----
From: <Moontanman_at_aol.com>

> I'm not sure I understand what you guys are saying about catfish. While
some
> species can be caught on stink baits I have found that fresh even better
live
> bait is best for many species of catfish. Flatheads love live sunfish and
most
> other really like live worms or night crawlers. I used to run trot lines
> regularly and I found that live bait out performs stink bait every time.
Stink
> bait was more likely to catch snapping turtles than catfish. Many times of
would
> alternate each hook on a trot line with a different bait, live crayfish,
live
> sunfish, night crawlers, or dough balls or chicken liver and some of the
most
> disgusting stink baits. The live baits always won out with more catches.
I've
> even caught channel cats on spinners a few times.
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