There has been a lot of talk of tad poles lately and my pond is one of those that has had them since last fall. They are finally turning to frogs and dissipating, but because of their overwhelming presence, I have been wondering what to do with them, if anything.
Background - A week ago I set a trap and caught some of my FHM's for fishing on the Lamine River. We caught a few dozen larges and had a nice fishing trip. Another trip was planned for last Saturday so I set the trap out Friday night, but only caught a few minnows and a lot of bull tadpoles (we had to stop and buy some minnows). So, when given lemons...I started the day out with the tadpoles as bait. I was operating the trolling motor so a lot of cast fishing was not going to happen and I just let my tadpole, hooked up through the lower lip out the bridge of the nose, trail behind under a bobber. I caught a couple of 1.5# LMB off the tadpoles to my surprise. Tadpoles will catch fish! The only other time I have caught bass with tads is by agitating them on the beds. They were not interested in eating the tads, but rather just trying to keep them out of the bed. This time the tads were moving along rather slowly in 3-4 foot of water and probably bobbin along about 1 foot or 2 below the surface. The bass were actively wanting to eat them.
Now, with all that said, my fishing partner out-fished me horribly and was using minnows and worms. I switched to worms when he started pulling in RES that were close to a pound and plenty of 1/2# BG's.
Moral of the trip...fish will hit bull tads, but we were better of with the minnows or worms. The overall "experiment" was to determine if fish actively seek and eat tadpoles...Well, I, now, know they do and that is good for those of us that have too many tads in the pond. I just wish my newly stocked fish had the gape for it...next year!
Here's the "Show Off Your Catch" photos. All the bass were in the slot range and had to go back. These fish were caught on night crawlers.
