What do you do with your fish?

[robow7 0]

Capt. Bob, here in the midwest, you can add the Asian Bighead or Silver carp to that list of fish that if prepared properly make for excellent table fare. I only wish you could take one on a fly rod but they are plankton filter feeders.

[JSzymczyk 0]

I have zero issues legally keeping and eating whatever fish someone wants to eat. I love to eat fish. Steelhead are at the top of my list. I pretty much despise combat fishing the streams, and I only get possibly one week and another weekend in the fall to make a trip. I troll and cast from my kayak, and have caught them from the beach in certain areas. If I get a week in October or November and I am able to safely get out on the Lake for one day, I am thankful. Last year I had zero opportunities. The year before I caught 4 steelhead and a laker, all of them ate very well. The impact I have on the resource is essentially zero. I work very hard to get them so I am thankful when I do. I see guys catch them from the breakwalls and in the streams and horribly mistreat them, then "release" them to almost certain death. Stocked trout- hell yes I eat those too. There has been lots of talk of SE Pa here- and I actually haven't done much stream fishing for trout in a few years - lyme disease makes one paranoid about ticks which are ridiculous in this area. There is a lake not too far which is stocked and in the past has provided a lot of good fishing right up into winter. Nothing better than a stringer full of bluegills and crappies and yellow perch. Yes it takes longer to fillet them than to eat them but I am really good at it. Except in very few instances in this area especially, those being tiny limestone and spring creeks with wild trout, the environments is so far gone from what it naturally would be, that the fisheries are either totally artificial or managed for put-and-take. I don't prefer to eat bass, largemouths I have tried have been tasteless, smallmouths OK from cold northern waters but not here. Everyone worships the smallmouths in the Susquehanna watershed and they are wonderful game fish, but almost nobody acknowledges that they were introduced to the drainage in the 1860s. ON and on.

[JSzymczyk 0]

Making fun of SE PA. I was on a board one time and there was a guy moving from Colorado to Philadelphia for a job and he wanted to know if he should sell his fly rods before he moved here. There's some decent places to fish around here. Picture of my favorite creek. This is in the middle of the fourth largest city in the US, so they claim, the 4th largest city.

 

Wissahickon0002.jpg

 

12 inch bluegills not in this creek. There are lakes that are managed for trophy pan fish in the area and you might get a 12 inch bluegill out of one of them. I just haven't seen them. I'm on board to find those 12 inch bluegills. I think there's a better chance to find one in one of the lakes in the Poconos at least there I've consistently caught gills and pumpkin seed in the 10 inch range.

It's the fourth largest city because it stretches from Harrisburg to Newark to DC!!!

[Philly 0]

T

 

 

Making fun of SE PA. I was on a board one time and there was a guy moving from Colorado to Philadelphia for a job and he wanted to know if he should sell his fly rods before he moved here. There's some decent places to fish around here. Picture of my favorite creek. This is in the middle of the fourth largest city in the US, so they claim, the 4th largest city.

 

Wissahickon0002.jpg

 

12 inch bluegills not in this creek. There are lakes that are managed for trophy pan fish in the area and you might get a 12 inch bluegill out of one of them. I just haven't seen them. I'm on board to find those 12 inch bluegills. I think there's a better chance to find one in one of the lakes in the Poconos at least there I've consistently caught gills and pumpkin seed in the 10 inch range.

It's the fourth largest city because it stretches from Harrisburg to Newark to DC!!!

 

That may have been an over reaching Chamber of Commerce. It's listed as the 6th largest city. Still it's in a good location for fishing. Salt Water less than 2 hours. Steelhead and Salmon 6 hours if you head up I-81. Still some native brookies in the Poconos, a 2 hour drive. 2 hours to the limestone streams in central PA. And you really don't need to drive out to the Susquehanna for smallmouth. Plenty of them around here. I agree about the ticks, not worth bushwhacking to find a stream or lake to fish and then spend an hour looking for ticks in or on various body parts when you get back.

[Poopdeck 0]

I stopped wet wading because of ticks. I always wear my waders now for extra tick protection. I also enjoy the diversity of fishing in SE Pa and could not imagine having to limit myself to one type of fishing or, god forbid, having to focus on trout. You forgot we have the worlds best shad and striper run and a great walleye fishery right at our doorstep.

[Dominecker 0]

I release lots of fish of all kinds. I kill and eat lots of fish of all kinds. Catfish and crappie are year-round staples in my freezer. When I kill a mess of trout, I eat them fresh. I really wish more people would keep a limit of wild trout here in the Smokies. Since catch-and-release caught on, most of the creeks are absolutely clogged with small, stunted trout, like an overpopulated farm pond full of little bluegills. .

[JSzymczyk 0]

I stopped wet wading because of ticks. I always wear my waders now for extra tick protection. I also enjoy the diversity of fishing in SE Pa and could not imagine having to limit myself to one type of fishing or, god forbid, having to focus on trout. You forgot we have the worlds best shad and striper run and a great walleye fishery right at our doorstep.

I really want to learn about shad fishing. I read about Conowingo and have talked to folks who go there, they describe it as sort of shoulder-to-shoulder when the run is happening. I'd rather probably get to the Delaware or the Schuylkill but I haven't devoted the time to learn. I want to catch a few just because I never have- My issue with SE Pa isn't the lack of fishing - it's the crowds

[Poopdeck 0]

The Delaware is the place to go. It has no dams. If you don't like crowds you might want to take a pass on shad. I shad fish from a boat and never with fly gear. I suppose I could strap a fly rod into a downrigger but that's no more fly fishing then using my spinning gear. The other option is to go when the shad may be there but the crowds won't. Shad are in the river the entire month of April but they are also spotty in mid to late march. The crowds don't arrive until the reports have them in thick as fleas. If you go the end of March or early April the crowds will be low but so will the fish.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Speaking of great fish for the table - most coastal anglers are well aware that cobia makes great table fare (and one fish is usually enough for quite a few dinners - or a full family for one big meal..). My anglers caught and very carefully released this 30lb fish just a few days ago....

just nothing like the Everglades....

[The Mad Duck 0]

Speaking of great fish for the table - most coastal anglers are well aware that cobia makes great table fare (and one fish is usually enough for quite a few dinners - or a full family for one big meal..). My anglers caught and very carefully released this 30lb fish just a few days ago....

just nothing like the Everglades....

 

YUM...thats a LOT of good eating.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

once again... very carefully released... sigh...

 

And while that was happening my other angler was hooked up to something in the "unstoppable" category at the same time with the heaviest rod on my skiff that day... That animal couldn't be slowed or turned - and after almost thirty minutes of chasing it so my angler wouldn't get spooled... we just couldn't raise it enough in only eight feet of water to even see what it was... It was kind of a relief when we finally broke it off and started the long run back to Flamingo... The way it acted I figure we could have fought it for a few hours without making any progress at all... Just nothing like the Everglades....

[mikechell 0]

almost thirty minutes of chasing it so my angler wouldn't get spooled... we just couldn't raise it enough in only eight feet of water to even see what it was...

I watched a fish fight like that ... but he finally got it up. One of the largest rays I've ever seen. I guess they just fold their "wings" into the bottom and kind of suction cup themselves in place.

 

You'd know more about that than I ... just relaying what I saw that day.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Along the gulf coast of the glades there are sawfish up to twenty feet long (Ive seen them), quite a few big sharks (lemons, bulls, blacktips, tigers, hammers -the great hammerhead - a tarpon eating machine... Weve gotten close to eighteen footers on both coasts)... And, of course really big round rays that can get as much as five feet wide...

 

In short, plenty of possibles and all of them really hungry. The dark waters of the glades are no place to go swimming at all...

[Steeldrifter 0]

I actually never knew there were sawfish down there. I remember seeing them on an episode with Jeremy Wade (think he was in Australia?) but I didn't know there were any here in the states. That's pretty cool to hear.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

A few years back there was a team from Mote Marine Labs doing a work-up on sawfish with the intention of getting the species listed on the endangered species regime... I was hired for a few days at a time over a three year period to show them some of my sawfish spots... Here's the deal. Everywhere in the world the sawfish is not only on the decline - but in many places just not around any more at all. The problem is inshore netting since any sawfish that swims into a net is done - they simply can't get untangled and in the process a big one actually will destroy any net that catches it... The only place left in the world that has a healthy population is the Everglades since they've been protected there forever - and the Park has never allowed any commercial netting at all since it was formed (1948).

 

Once I learned that the species was in bad shape I quit fishing for them particularly the big ones (except when we encounter babies that will strike a fly -or anything else they encounter in really shallow places). The babies, like the adults, only pick up food off the bottom either fish they've killed or dead that they scavenge up. When a sawfish strikes with it's bill - that's where you end up hooking one - not in the mouth so it relatively easy to un-hook (or untangle it) at the boat with no harm done... Here's a pic of a small one just before the release...

 

If you know where to look you can find good numbers of small ones almost any day in the shallow mud-bottomed bays of the backcountry. Many that see them think they're looking at a small shark since the bill (properly called the rostrum) is very hard to see unless the fish is at the surface... The big ones (our best to the boat was a 14 footer) you rarely ever see - but if you fish for sharks eventually you will have a big one at the boat. Big ones are a handful at the boat and will actually whack your boat (or you if you're not very careful) with that bill... A "14 foot" sawfish is a bit mis-leading since almost four feet of that measurement is the rostrum.... so you're actually dealing with a fish that's only ten feet long, not counting the bill or rostrum...

 

Now for the good news.... after saws were placed on the endangered list they began to make a comeback here in Florida - that had actually been in progress for a few years before the research was started. Here in my state we outlawed inshore netting back in the early nineties and as a result, sawfish are again being found to the north of the Everglades along our coasts. If inshore netting was stopped everywhere else (the entire Gulf coast and the Atlantic side as well...) the saws would make a great comeback in my opinion. Elsewhere in the world, once again, it's inshore nets that have wiped them out...

 

Like I tell my customers - there's just nothing like the Everglades.. .It's my favorite place in this world.