Pit Fisher.... I'm curious as to what kind of bait you put in your trap??? I really like the design and the floatation(sp) ideas.
No bait. Fish swim the banks at night looking for food and run into the barricade and swim down it into the trap. Works perfect. We're adding a couple hoop style traps that a neighbor has in the morning in other parts of the lake. We'll see how they do too. I think I'll set them up with barricades too.
Pit Fisher.... I'm curious as to what kind of bait you put in your trap??? I really like the design and the floatation(sp) ideas.
I just went back and looked at your design....And I'm thinking of building one except with an entrance on both sides. One high and one low. What do you think?
I think you might end up with too many fish escaping.
I can see the handles on the side but how are you removing the fish?
The whole back side is held on by some pins. I just pull them out and it comes off. There's actually a separate back panel made out of a little bigger angle iron that I cut 1" bigger and it slides right over the back frame. Tough to see in the pics. If I remember to in the morning, I'll take a pic of it when I check the trap.
Could you put a bracket on each side, slide a piece of 5/8" or so round stock thru the bracket and add 2 tires? It should be heavy enough to keep everything on the bottom, but allow you to tip it up. pivot it backwards and then up on the tires and roll it out of the pond. (tires actually on top back edge of the unit) Wider tires won't sink into the bottom as much.
Could you put a bracket on each side, slide a piece of 5/8" or so round stock thru the bracket and add 2 tires? It should be heavy enough to keep everything on the bottom, but allow you to tip it up. pivot it backwards and then up on the tires and roll it out of the pond. (tires actually on top back edge of the unit) Wider tires won't sink into the bottom as much.
this is an old established pond. It has minimum 6-8 inches of silt that tires would sink right into. I got it pretty good now with the dock float. Here's pics of this mornings catch. Barely enough to dirty a pan! Nice redear though! For reference the panel of the trap that they are laying against is 2 feet across.
The 2nd pic of the fish in the basket is last nights catch after only a few hours in the water during the afternoon/evening.
I am finding that I am getting all left handed fish in the left side and right handed fish in the right side. Should I cull all the lefties to prevent cross traffic in the pond?
Check the fish that go in the back of trap, probably all males.
You know I never noticed that before but you are right. Except for a few butch female redears. Probably due to their genetic superiority over smaller sunfishes giving them an inflated view of themselves.
I also noticed very few left handed crappie. My theory is that the fractal patterns on the sides of the crappie were designed to induce confusion in their prey causing many sunfish that escaped predation at an early age to become unsure of themselves and develop inferiority complex's and turn to isolating themselves in the weeds and brush piles. Without proper socialization these ones developed adaptation techniques based on their environment and those with better escape routes to the left developed "enviromentally induced" left handedness. Then when they spawn and raise their children creating a "learned behavior" of lefthandedness in their offspring. I believe this to be the downfall of many once great ponds. Just a theory........
Pit Fisher, churchs have been started on less theory then yours. How big are those croppie? Are they thick across back? It is amazing how fast fish grow in a pit like that. What is your theory on that?
I have incredible food in our lake. Everywhere you go there's hundreds of minnows in the weeds along the edge. Easy to get fat with that much to eat. Here's a pic of a second trap system we set up today. It's a 100' sein ran across to the far bank as a barricade and then 2 hoop nets (one on each side) installed at the end as traps. I got anxious and pulled the other trap during mid day today and had about 20 more bluegill and a half dozen big red ears in it just from sitting from 8-2. Anxious to see what the 2 traps yeild this evening when I empty them again before the overnight soak.
I don't know. I didn't measure them. some were probably 11"-12" and others 13"-14". Not the bigger size that we sometimes catch. Sometimes we catch 15"-17".
They were really pretty fish. I am going to but 6 dz. small shiners and try to give them a beating tomorrow. Don't have the enery to bass fish but love the croppie anyway. We have taken out over 900 that I suspect look a lot like yours. Good luck taking your fish out.
Neither trap setup yielded much today. About a dozen fish total. Pretty dissapointing. Kinda sucks getting in this cold water and doing all that work for not much fish to move.
Location of the trap means a lot on the numbers of fish that it will catch on any given day. If you aren't seeing a lot of fish, and you know they are there, move it.