Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Bowfin Questions

George,
You might as well throw in some needle nose & alligator gar and a few nasty old freshwater eel. Ha!
Charlie

Feed them BH to keep with the "Theme" of the pond?

Bill D.,
...that would give a new meaning to "you are what you eat"...with that, it would be a "true" trash fish pond. Heck, you could feed'em anything. Dang Bill, you might be on to something here.
Charlie

Growing up in East Texas, I recall tearing up tackle and busting knuckles on old direct drive bait casting reels.

A good friend of mine needs some Bowfin to clean out his mud cats...but I ain't gonna tell! But wait a minute - he may already have some..
It's not the fish in the fight - it's the fight in the fish!
George

I think he did but I don't remember. I'll see if I can find it if I can still remember my password on the site.

Edit: Found it. Always counterclockwise.

Back in the mid-70's, I was fishing some flooded woods backwater in SW Louisiana with a buddy out of a 14' flatbottom alum boat. I hooked what I thought was a monster LMB. It turned out to be a monster choupique. Don't know what he weighed, but he was much longer than the bottom of the boat was wide. My guess today 8-9lbs. I managed to get him unhooked before he started tearing through the boat. He managed to flop down in the middle of an open 2 door center opening tackle box...that's when all hell broke loose. Lures and baits with treble hooks were flying everywhere...like a hurricane in a tackle shop...we had no place to run. Just made a vain attempt to cover our eyes and faces until the rapture subsided...not long after that, the big fish flipped out of the boat back into the water and swam off with about 4-5 lures and hooks imbedded in several parts of his body...true story.
Stickem

LOL....Charlie you made my day. Good story! Reminds me of the night a big CC tore the seat out of my pants but we will leave that story for a different day...........

I got hit in the forehead by a jumping rainbow trout one night fishing with lanterns. Not sure if that was the night our lantern went to the bottom of the lake or not.

Ever thrown the anchor in and forgot to tie the other end of the line to the boat?...

A couple of years later...3 of us were running wide open in a 14' alum boat w/ 20hp Mercury on our way duck hunting before daylight. I was seated up front with the lantern and two buddies were side by side in the back. A mullet jumps and nails me square in the middle of my chest. One buddy in the back busted out laughing and about that time another mullet jumps and slaps him right in the mouth.... we laughed close to tears.

Bill,
...good thing you had pants on...do tell!

I have had mullet hit me while running a boat across the bay- that hurts

Pat W

I have been anchored and fishing in the ship channel and caught two nice anchors with ropes attached on a fishing line in the same fishing trip...

No but one of my exbrother-in-law did something like that. It was a nice anchor too!

I left the plug out of the boat when launching once. Never did it again!

You are the man Cecil!

Plug in the boat.....So I had this 12 foot john boat sitting at the dock that had about 3 inches of water in it. The boat is equipped with a mighty 7 hp outboard so I think I will just take it out, get it going fast and then pull the plug. The water will run out, right? Wrong! I did get the plug back in before I sank! Had a coffee can for bailing so happy ending.....bailing the original 3 inches out would have been a lot faster but then I wouldn't have this story to tell!

I would love to go fishing with you sometime my friend but I am quite sure one of us would end up in the water and the other would have a hook in his ear!

Any idea why it didn't work? Too full? It's always worked for me.

On a funny note my cousin who can't swim was driving my boat out of the pier. I was in the front seat. We had some water in the boat and I told him to pull the plug and open up the motor. He just looked at me. I told him again. No response. I told him one more time. He just looks at me with hesitation. I tell him there is nothing to worry about that it really works. He says,"no."

Turns out we fished with wet feet 'cause he was afraid to do it and he wouldn't switch seats. Kind of pissed me off. I drove the boat from then on and I pulled the damn plug if need be! But usually I remembered to pull the plug with the boat on the ramp before we backed it in.

The boat stays in the garage now and never gets wet unless it rains while I'm fishing.

I'm older and wiser now. It's the other people I worry about on the lakes now. The biggest natural lake in the state is 10 minutes from me and although the fishing is great I fear for my life there. A lot of the speed boaters appear to be inebriated..

That's an easy one. If I would have somebody in the front of the boat it would have worked fine. Since I was alone with no one to counter balance and pull the front of the boat down, all the water moved to the back with me and the motor. Could not get enough speed out of that little seven to get the boat to plane.

Might have still worked ok if I had a way to trim that 7 but they ain't built that way.

Anyone besides me, arrive at the boat ramp in the early morning darkness, ready for a duck hunt, and get out of the truck to see the trailor but no boat?

No, but I did once see no trailer.

No but one summer when I worked for the INDNR I did see some anglers show up without their fishing gear. A van pulls up. They pull out a small boat and are all ready to go when one if them asks, "Hey where are the fishing poles?" Soon they put the boat back in, pile back in the van, and leave

I've launched the boat, go to pull back up the ramp and the trailer came unhitched, digging into the bottom of the lake at the tongue.

It seems that the nut that was on the bottom of the latch worked it's way loose on the way to the lake.

To get the trailer out of the lake I just drug it out with the truck, making a nice trench in the dirt boat ramp. I spent the majority of the day running all over the nearby towns to find the part. We were fishing on Sunday morning.

Ended up at a Wal-Mart and bought a whole bolt-on/weld-on part and cobbling it together with the one that was welded onto the trailer to get the boat back out of the lake and home...

It was up near Constantine, MI.

We found the boat about 1/2 mi up the rd from the ramp. It was like it just slid off the trailer. All the decoys and such were still in the boat and the boat was in the ditch beside the rd. Boat was lying rite side up , just like we launched it there. It was a pain in the arse to get it back on the trailer. U know, boats are a lot heaver than they look lol

One time many years ago we were offshore fishing in my 25'Mako for red snapper about 40 miles out. We were tied off to a rig and I was on the bow fishing. It was rough that day 5'-7' seas. My fishing buddy was in the stern fishing and he says to me, is there supposed to be water in the floor? Omg no! I went to the stern to see what was happening and the water was coming over the transom at the engine. O- crap, the hatch had popes up enough to let sea water in to the point that the bilge was full and the batteries were under water. The engine fired right up. Miracle. I went to run the bilge pump- no worky- so the only way to get the water out was to jump in and remove the drain plug and run the water out! Unhooked from the rig and headed towards Galveston. Talk about sluggish the boat had the bilge full of water and prob 6" in the floor. And the seas were not helping at all,anyway got the boat going and bow up and water going down . It took prob 25 minutes to empty out the hull . After the water drained out I just put a expandable plug in temporary till we got to dry land . That was a scary thing to happen that far out in the Gulf

Pat W