The Official North American Native Fish Collecting Thread

[Chub_by]

Yeah they are, but I would prefer bowfin as they can be kept outdoors, my tank inside is too small for large snakehead species.

 

[Duckman77]

Yeah they are, but I would prefer bowfin as they can be kept outdoors, my tank inside is too small for large snakehead species.

Northern snakeheads (Channa argus) could be kept outdoors.

I have two 6-7" bowfin right now (one of them wild caught from my private pond). You can envy my bowfin and I will envy your right to keep snakeheads.

 

[Siddons11]

Caught in S. FL

 

[divemaster99]

Got myself 16 (if I counted right) Y.O.Y. Yellow Perch from the lagoon in Presque Isle in Lake Erie before we left for home. Erie's perch are very healthy so if these little guys have the right genes they could get 10-16" even! Probably not keeping all the perch and will be giving a few to a friend, just expecting casualties since, well, they're perch lol. Oh and also caught a little YOY Bluegill so he's coming home too . Other fish I caught were Banded Killies which I have enough of at home and Largemouth Bass which I don't feel like letting eat all the perch once it gets an inch bigger than them... I'll be sure to update on them once they're acclimated.

 

[Lepisosteus]

Every summer I go snorkeling 2-5 times a week in a place called peche Island on Lake st Clair Ontario Canada. The water's crystal clear and I never see anyone there. I also has a nice rocky bottom so it holds just about every darter and shiner you can imagine. It also holds a great number of madtoms and small to lobster sized crayfish. I also see smallmouth bass follow behind me by mere feet, waiting to snatch anything that swims away as I over turn rocks XD. I don't really have much space or time to set up a native tank but I will as soon as I have the chance, since I always have access to such beautiful fish. I also got a nice action camera and hope to get some nice underwater footage this year!

Don't forget the musky in that lake!!

 

[Anthony Nolet]

Got myself 16 (if I counted right) Y.O.Y. Yellow Perch from the lagoon in Presque Isle in Lake Erie before we left for home. Erie's perch are very healthy so if these little guys have the right genes they could get 10-16" even! Probably not keeping all the perch and will be giving a few to a friend, just expecting casualties since, well, they're perch lol. Oh and also caught a little YOY Bluegill so he's coming home too . Other fish I caught were Banded Killies which I have enough of at home and Largemouth Bass which I don't feel like letting eat all the perch once it gets an inch bigger than them... I'll be sure to update on them once they're acclimated.

View attachment 1131860

I caught 5 yellow perch that range from 4/5"-8" (one 8"er the others are smaller) about 2 weeks ago and they're all fine and awesome. They're so much different looking than the sunfish that I have but I like them the same way haha. They get along with the green sunfish that they're with so its perfect. Hopefully tomorrow I'm going to go catch some crappie finally, we're getting off the shore and taking the boat out. If everything goes right I'll have 2 black crappie at home tomorrow!

 

[divemaster99]

I caught 5 yellow perch that range from 4/5"-8" (one 8"er the others are smaller) about 2 weeks ago and they're all fine and awesome. They're so much different looking than the sunfish that I have but I like them the same way haha. They get along with the green sunfish that they're with so its perfect. Hopefully tomorrow I'm going to go catch some crappie finally, we're getting off the shore and taking the boat out. If everything goes right I'll have 2 black crappie at home tomorrow!

Good to hear with your perch, I had three that I got last July and lost in October but they were also bait store perch I found in with some shiners so probably weren't the healthiest things to begin with.

 

[Anthony Nolet]

Good to hear with your perch, I had three that I got last July and lost in October but they were also bait store perch I found in with some shiners so probably weren't the healthiest things to begin with.

You have them a good last few months

 

[Moontanman]

Collecting trip on the Black River near Garland NC. By the Southeastern NC sub chapter of NANFA


A great day of collecting and interaction with several bystanders started out a bit gloomy As soon as Fritz showed up at my house it began to rain and it looked like it might follow us all day, but as we left Wilmington the rain stopped and the skies stayed overcast. This was good. It suppressed the air temperatures and we enjoyed mid 70’s weather most of the day -- it was a great day to collect!

On the trip was Fritz Rohde, Brian Perkins, Peter Perschbacher, Rick Sanchez, Scott Smith,Randy Pulley and me (Michael Hissom)


I was amazed at the natural beauty of the Black River. We saw huge old cypress trees with knees nearly four feet tall covered in a tough coating of moss formed their own forest under the canopy of cypress as well as water tupelos and many other wetland trees. This gave us an almost mysterious backdrop to the day’s collecting.

I was stoked from the very beginning due to a wonderful apparition caused by the overcast skies and the flat smooth water that caused the quiet pools to look like stainless steel mirrors of the sky and water. The first place we stopped to look was framed by a huge dead cypress tree and a half arched living tree that had fallen over into the water and along with the reflection from the surface of the water made it look like a round portal into another world!

As we moved down to the river bed the mud looked intimidating but we quickly learned it wasn’t as deep as it could have been in such a slow water basin. The water was more or less air temperature and the pressure as my waders allowed me to wade out into the water felt cool on my legs and helped keep the waders from being hot.

The bottom of the stream was fine light brown sand in most places and in the shallows among the vegetation there were darters and mudfish abound. Our efforts with the seine and shocker were less than what we had hoped for although the capture of a mudpuppy made my day! We did catch a large red-breasted sunfish as well as a few dollar sunfish.

We moved to another site on the same river at a wildlife landing and had several interesting conversations with people enjoying the day and the river. The bottom here was mostly sand and gravel and the water flowed a little faster, but we didn’t pick up much in the way of new species at this site other than some tiny gar a redfin pickerel and a chain pickerel.

We saw the head of a flathead catfish was found on the bottom, evidently the result of catching and cleaning the fish on site a day or so before we were there.

The next site on the Black River we sampled had a beautiful cover of Cape Fear Spatterdock, the river bottom was thickly covered by the spatterdock over a large area but the fish population turned out to be elusive but we did harvest some nice plants.

Species list for the day:

·American eel
·Longnose gar
·Golden shiner
·Dusky shiner
·Ironcolor shiner (maybe)
·Comely shiner
·Coastal shiner
·Eastern silvery minnow
·Creek chubsucker
·Spotted sucker
·Channel catfish
·Flathead catfish!!
·Chain pickerel
·Redfin pickerel (maybe)
·Swampfish
·Pirateperch
·Eastern mosquitofish
·Bluespotted sunfish
·Flier
·Redbreast sunfish
·Bluegill
·Dollar sunfish
·Spotted sunfish
·Warmouth
·Largemouth bass
·Banded pygmy sunfish
·Tessellated darter
·Sawcheek darter
·Piedmont darter

Some pics of this day of collecting, I still haven't gotten the fish pics but here is some of the collecting trip.

 

[BrookKeeper]

I thought this thread was supposed to be about collection techniques? Has anyone been electrofishing?