WillowCats – How & when to fish them?

I hold ’em with my thumb on the belly with the dorsal fin between my index and middle fingers. Or if you use a net style minnow scoop, they’re pretty easy to hold if you leave ’em in the netting while you hook up.

Walleyes can be caught on bullheads…. but they do not fish the same as a willow cat. Poor substitute at best. Given the price of willow cats and the ease in obtaining bullheads, I wish it was true. I’ve tried. Its not. At least not in my experience.

Dude…Are Bullheads even legal to fish with in Minnesota?…I thought game fish was a “No…No.”…I can see them in IOWA….LOL..AND REALLY….!!!!

I’m Just Kidding…..

Its funny…. though perhaps Ive told this story before… but my first year with the DNR I worked at the Clear Lake Hatchery in Clear Lake Iowa….. if you have ever been there perhaps you will recall the big aquariums they had which contained various species of fish…… well as the new grunt in town it was MY job to catch the bait to FEED them suckers… it was a riot actually…. I put minnow traps all over and hauled in fatheads…. and when it was feeding time at the zoo… what carnage!! particularly in the aquarium with the white bass/crappies….. *sheese* those fish went CRAZY!!!!…
well… anyway as the summer got hotter catching bait got HARDER…. eventually I was reduced to dipping bullhead fry out of the lake.. there were vast black hordes of them…. oh yeah… the fish WOULD eat them…… but not with the fury they consumed fatheads……. I remember the walleyes would sneak up on them, suck them in… and then kept their gills flared while trying to choke them down…. those little barbed pectoral fins stick straight out and cause them to lodge in their throats!!!….. also the Norther pike absolutly REFUSED to eat them…. and heres the funny thing…. well not THAT funny….. the bullheads swarmed around the northern and ate all the slime off them and then the pike all died…. so then I had to go net more pike……. you cant imagine the S**t I took for feeding the Pike to the Bullheads!!!!
anyway… I can attest to the fact that thought the Eyes DID eat the bullheads… there sure were NOT happy about it…….

Cool post Rivereyes…………I knew you had done that job but hadn’t heard that story. You just managed to explain something that I didn’t even realize I was wondering about…………………..’til now of course! LOL!

And for a second there I thought I was going to have to go buy a book to learn something today!