I like cats too. But I can never eat a whole one.

It sounds like a plan, JWB. I’ll private message you.
BigE – I’ll see you at the AFS meeting. Maybe we can get in some fishing some evening. Will you be around Thursday evening? I could not get a flight out after the Asian carp action plan meeting on Thursday, so will be around till Friday morning.

Higher fuel consumption and more noise are part of the price you pay for a jet, in addition to the ones I pointed out above. Also, you have to have a higher horsepower powerhead to get the same thrust, so there is a lot more weight on the transom. They mark down the horsepower rating on the cowling by about a third when you put a jet lower unit on, but effectively I think the reduction ought to be closer to half. There is also the dollar price you pay for that jet motor. Jets are also very sensitive to weight distribution in the boat. If you have a person walk to the back, it may be hard to get on plane; if a person walks to the front, you WILL lose all reverse power – make sure your weight is in the back when you want to stop fast. Jets SUCK (in both the literal and figurative sense) if there is any floating debris around. The debris will clog the intake, and bits of floating wood will clog the water intake (there is no water pump on most jets other than the one that drives the boat) and it will clog a lot. If the little holes clog with a bit of wood or a small pebblem then you have to take the cage apart to get to the impeller, and you have to remove the impeller to get at those little holes. So steer clear of floating debris! If you have to go through floating debris, go through at top speed – if you putter-put through, I can guarantee you will be dismanteling the lower unit. For similar reasons, it is easy to fill the entire cooling system of a jet unit (including inside the powerhead) with sand, if you drive it up on a sand bar and let the pump suck up sand. That is an expensive repair, and it happens a lot.
Another thing I don’t like about jets is how they slide sideways in high-speed turns. Dangerous, and you can potentially catch a chine on a wave when sliding sideways and flip the boat. It is in fact possible to turn a jet boat 90 degrees to the direction you are traveling, which is not a good thing if you want to stay upright.
Don’t get me wrong – jets are really nice if you need one. And you can’t beat them for slow-speed handling and turning radius once you get the knack of it, and you have your weight distro right.

Tunnel boats are designed to run in extremely shallow water. Some tunnel boats are designed to run with jet outboards, others with props. There are many different degrees and styles of tunnel boats. In some the tunnel goes almost the full length of the boat, in others it starts about half-way back. In some, like Baymaster boats, the tunnel kind of splits in half about midway up the hull and becomes part of a kind of trihull configuration. Some tunnel boats, like the roughneck aluminum boats, have a very small rectangular tunnel designed to fit a jet. Prop tunnel boats have a wide variety of tunnel shapes and sizes. All of these designs have different advantages and disadvantages. Because this web site caters to primarily people in the northern states, and these types of tunnels are more common there, I am assuming you are talking about an aluminum boat with a jet. Here is my take on tunnels, and I have driven many different kinds as fisheries research vessels. Tunnels generally require more power applied to get on plane and to stay on plane. Once on plane, they handle fine. I dislike the older Roughneck hull design particularly. The ones we have here will not stay on plane at below about 3800 rpm with an appropriate jet motor to boat size ratio. I have not driven any newer tunnel Roughnecks, but my supervisor has a new Roughneck (personal boat, and not a tunnel) that is very nice. But the power to plane thing is pretty much a constant problem with tunnel boats. If you want to plane at slower speeds, a tunnel is not your best bet. Tunnels also have problems with reverse power, especially if the engine is not pointing straight behind the boat, because the thrust of the water hits the side of the tunnel. This makes it hard to go any direction but straight backwards when in reverse. Also, you lose a lot of stopping power. If you are used to throwing it into reverse to stop to keep from ramming the dock, start a lot earlier when using a tunnel. I sometimes use tunnels because I have to. I don’t particularly like them for any purpose other than that for which they were specifically designed. I wouldn’t want to commute to work in a 4-wheeler ATV either.

This one is my brother. We were up in MN about 2 years ago camping out. Not a real good thing for my bro, who is not much of an outdoorsman anyway and is VERY sensitive to mosquitos. The mosquitos were not too bad out on the lake, but they were mobbing the shoreline at the ramp. As I was pulling up, he manages to get one hook of a big three-treble rapala in his shoelaces and can’t get it unstuck. Rather than risk the mosquitos while working on the lure, he cuts it off the rod and decides to run back to the tent with the thing dangling. You guessed it. He got the other trebles in his other leg at full stride and it tied him up good. Face plant in the road with one foot hooked to the other leg below the knee. And the Mosquitos having supper, of course. I took pity on him and clipped the hooks off the lure and he pulled them out himself inside the tent.

When I was a kid I was throwing out trot lines along an undercut bank on a tributary of the Tennessee (or maybe was the TN proper – been a long time ago now). Anyhoo, we were tying off one end on the bank and the other end has a large sash weight on it. You just bait all the dropper lines and then heave the sash weight off the bank as hard as you can. And some of these were some hummer hooks, too, with chunks of shad on them. Well, I was standing on the edge there, gave the sash weight a good swing, and one of those big catfish hooks caught me in the calf. For a split second I thought it was going to jerk me off the bank. I was right. Down to the bottom in current with my leg hooked to a sash weight. My pocket knife is of course up on the bucket of shad. The current pulled me flat to the bottom on my back, and I can’t see anything, but I could flail around and reach the cord, so I grab it and chew like a beaver. Bad move. I chewed through the wrong end of the cord and now I am flat on my back anchored to the bottom and I am passing out. Meanwhile my Uncle Bob sees this and comes running over, thinking he’s going to pull me in like a giant catfish, but when he gets there the line goes slack and there is nothing on the end but some baited hooks and a chewed-up end. So he runs up the bank aways, pulls out his knife and jumps in. Somehow, by a miracle, he is swimming blind along the bottom and finds me and cuts me out. He drags me to the top. I felt him grab me when he came, and I didn’t know it was him. I remember thinking that if it was an animal that was going to bite me it wouldn’t matter much, because I was a gonner anyway. Thats all I remember until I come to on a muddy bank with Bob blubbering like I was dead for sure. Very, very, nearly was. When we got home, I’ve still got this giant hook in my leg. Mom asks Pap (my grandpa) if he knows how to get hooks out. He says sure. Grabs a big pair of channel locks and just jerks it out. Like to took my leg with it. Had a big piece of meat on the barb and it wasn’t fish meat. I’m about to pass out again, but Pap says “aw, put some coal oil on it and you’ll be fine.” Still got a hole in my leg. After all these years you can’t see it unless you look real close, but if you pass your finger over it you can feel the void.

As I said I would, I asked the people who are in charge of developing these guidelines why bleach solutions were not among the recommended methods for removing invasives from boats and other water tools/toys. This is the response:

First – chemicals were not necessary because drying, washing with hot water or power spraying were alternatives; second, some agencies dis not agree with the use of chlorine and we were trying to develop regional and national guidelines; third, use of chmicals could have impacts on fish in livewells or bait containers; lastly, many did not want residual chemicals ending up in our waters either from the equipment or draining into the water at a boat landing. There is also the consideration of FIFRA and whether these products are registered and labeled for use as this type of pesticide. Lastly, there is evidence that listing too many potential ways to get the job done can be counterproductive, because it is confusing and harder to remember, and when people are confused, they tend to not do anything.

The information below is from the link. There is info on how to use hot water, vinegar, or tablesalt in water to kill freshwater invasives. You would think bleach would be a good alternative too, and possibly less corrosive than salt or vinegar, but I don’t know why it is not on the recommended list. In fact, that is something I should know and I will ask.

http://www.protectyourwaters.net/prevention/
General Prevention Procedures for Stopping Aquatic Hitchhikers: A must read for all recreational users.
Follow a general set of procedures every time you come in contact with any body of water. By doing so, you can protect your waters from harmful aquatic hitchhikers. Because you never know where a nuisance species has been introduced, but has yet to be discovered.

There are hundreds of different harmful species ranging from plants, fish, amphibians, crustaceans, mollusks, diseases or pathogens. Some organisms are so small, you may not even realize they are hitching a ride with you. So, it is important to follow this general procedure every time you leave any body of water.

Remove all visible mud, plants, fish/animals.
Before leaving any body of water, it is important to examine all your equipment, boats, trailers, clothing, boots, buckets etc and: Remove any visible plants, fish or animals.
Remove mud and dirt since it too may contain a hitchhiker.*
Remove even plant fragments as they may contain a hitchhiker.*
Do not transport any potential hitchhiker, even back to your home. Remove and leave them at the site you visited.
*The larvae (immature form) of an animal can be so tiny that you cannot see it. However, it can live in mud, dirt, sand, and on plant fragments.

Eliminate water from all equipment before transporting anywhere.
Much of the recreational equipment used in water contains many spots where water can collect and potentially harbor these aquatic hitchhikers. Thus, make sure that you: Eliminate all water from every conceivable item before you leave the area you are visiting.
Remove water from motors, jet drives, live wells, boat hulls, scuba tanks and regulators, boots, waders, bait buckets, seaplane floats, swimming floats.
Once water is eliminated, follow the cleaning instructions listed below.

Clean and dry anything that came in contact with the water.
(boats, trailers, equipment, dogs, boots, clothing, etc.). Basic procedures include: Use hot (< 40° C or 104° F) or salt water to clean your equipment.
Wash your dog with water as warm as possible and brush its coat.
The following recipes are recommended for cleaning hard-to-treat equipment that cannot be exposed to hot water:
Dipping equipment into 100% vinegar for 20 minutes will kill harmful aquatic hitchhiker species.
A 1 % table salt solution for 24 hours can replace the vinegar dip. This table provides correct mixtures for the 1 % salt solution in water:
Gallons of Water Cups of Salt
5 2/3
10 1 ¼
25 3
50 6 1/4
100 12 2/3

If hot water is not available, spray equipment such as boats, motors, trailers, anchors, decoys, floats, nets, with high-pressure water.
DRY Equipment. If possible, allow for 5 days of drying time before entering new waters.

Do not release or put plants, fish or animals into a body of water unless they came out of that body of water.
Also, do not release them into storm drains, because most storm drains lead to water bodies or wetlands. This is an important prevention step because many plants and animals can survive even when they appear to be dead. The two categories below describe some common situations where people may feel compelled to release aquatic plants or animals. Aquarium and Aquatic Pets: If your family gets tired of its aquarium or aquatic pets, do not release anything from the aquarium (water, plants, fish or animals) into or near a body of water or storm drain. Explain to your children how you could be hurting all of the streams and lakes around the country and killing other fish and animals that already live in the water.

If you cannot find a home for the critters in you aquarium, bury them. Dump the water into the toilet or yard, far away from storm drains.

Bait: Whether you have obtained bait at a store or from another body of water, do not release unused bait into the waters you are fishing. If you do not plan to use the bait in the future, dump the bait in a trashcan or on the land, far enough away from the water that it cannot impact this resource. Also, be aware of any bait regulations, because in some waters, it is illegal to use live bait.

http://www.protectyourwaters.net/prevention/

They seem to jump the highest when they are in the middle of the river in the current. You don’t get many that jump in that situation, but those that do – whew! I’ve seen one that looked like it could have dunked through a basketball goal if there had been one standing in the middle of the river. The coolest thing I’ve seen one do is jump over a wing dike that was at least 4 feet out of the water. We had the fish trapped behind the dike with a net (except those that jumped over the net, of course, and we were trying to drive the fish into the net. One of them decided to do a “Free Willy”. It did hit on top of the dike and bounce over. We had a TV news crew with us at the time. Too bad we did not get that on camera.

There have been a couple caught as far upriver as Lake Pepin. One sighting by a knowledgble biologist in the Red Cedar River in WI. Mostly they are still below the High Dam down in upper Iowa, but the odd fish showing up above that. It appears that the dams are acting as barriers, but incomplete barriers. That is not surprising, since the only way to go upriver most of the time is through the Lock, and these fish do not like boats. They seem to have jumped some dams on the TN river, though. On the Missouri Drainage, they are all the way up to the Gavins Point Dam, and then on up the James. I get an announcement of a range expansion every so often. They are in the Ohio River and its tributaries too, not quite to Pennsylvania at last check.

These maps are not perfect, but they help some.
silver carp extent:
http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/SpFactSh … ciesID=549

bighead carp extent:
http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/SpFactSheet.asp?speciesID=551

That boat in the picture is a Clark. They are made in Iowa. Very nice workboats, and the manufacturer will make you happy if you are not happy. The Clarks are mostly pad hulls – flat bottom in the back with a slight v in the front. They have a nice, easy to clean front sluice deck that you can pile up lots of slimy fish and then rinse the deck out the scuppers. At my Lab, we have 3 Clark boats. The Fish and Wildlife Service also has several in my area. They are great boats. I also have a Kann (made in Gutenburg IA) that is also darn good flotation. None of these boats are designed to be comfy – they are work boats and are designed to be as indestructable as possible and to be able to carry a lot of gear.

x

hope this works

How about a hatchet? We get a fair number of silvers this long, but look at the thickness of this thing. It is almost as big around as a bighead. It looks like someone hooked it up to a bicycle pump and pumped the fish up, but it is solid meat. We get them like this from time to time, don’t know what’s up with that. This fish is not even close to ripe, but it did have 1.4 kilos of eggs.

So far, this is the biggest silver that has jumped in my boat, and we have had a few about this weight in nets.

rvrrat – seems like the tributaries in the winter for bigheads and the big river for the silvers in the winter. In the summer, they switch places to some degree, although either can be found in either habitat in the summer. They are tough fish to catch on a rod and reel, or by any other method for that matter. You probably won’t catch one until it either jumps in your boat or they become very densely populated. Being filter feeders primarily, they don’t eat a lot of walleye baits, although I did catch one inside the mouth on a 3″ diving plug once. With the tiny throat these things have, there is no way it could have swallowed such a large bait. Who knows what it thought it was doing. Sometimes people catch bighead carp pretty good on trotlines baited with cheese. I think the fish are trying to knock off bits of the cheese and finally get hooked.

They like low velocity water. They like eddies, where they will often be right at the center. Sometimes they will be in large numbers in completely non-moving water, but only if that water is well-oxygenated. In the winter, many bigheads move into smaller tributaries from the mainstem river. Silvers do the opposite. Below dams is a good place to look for fishable bigheads. Bigheads will often eat that white or brown organic foam that builds up in slack water near turbulent areas; they can be shot with a bow and arrow when they are doing this. Bigheads also spend a significant amount of time in some places filtering the surface film in eddy areas, and you can shoot them there if you are very stealthy. These fish bring a whole new element to the idea of boat-shy, and will run long distances from gas OR trolling motors.

Now the toilet business doesn’t sound exciting – I hope my aging and damaged knees can take it. So I guess they don’t do much reading on the john there?? I can and do eat dang near anything – I kind of have a reputation for that, so not too afraid of the food angle. But the john thing, now there is something that bothers me, (as it should, for a guy who will eat dang near anything).

On some of my boats I do the steering wheel thing, but on others I tie a rope to the tie-down loop on the port side, wrap the rope around the cavitation plate (or the stingray fin when there is one) and then run the rope through the tiedown loop on the starboard side and tighten the whole thing up with a trucker’s hitch. This puts less strain on the steering linkage than bungeeing the steering wheel, and it works on tiller motors too. This takes about the same amount of time as the bungee, but it takes a modicum of know-how. This also removes any chance of the lower unit bouncing off the transom saver. Regarding the other style of transom saver mentioned in the link – I would hesitate for some types of transoms to go that route. Depends on your trailer usage and the strength of your transom. If you are talking a light aluminum jon boat – better go with the regular transom saver.

Jolly – I went to those sites and I gotta admit – it doesn’t seem easy to report spam. If I reported all the spam I am getting now, I would do nothing else. I get very little spam at work. They must have good spam filters, or does the spammer not try to spam business addresses? If they have good spam filters, where can I get said filters? I’m not sure I’d want to block every message that had the word viagra (or cialis – sheesh) in it, for example my Brother in law sends me some funny stuff that might include such language. Anyway, this spam thing is starting to get out of hand. I’m on dial up, and I’m starting to spend a significant amount of time downloading spam to delete.

Sorry for the venting – I know it is not your fault

I assume a drift sock is the same thing as a sea anchor. A big funnel-shaped cloth thing that hangs in the water with a small hole at the back. I’ve used them for years on the Laguna Madre for drift fishing. If I ever forgot my sea anchors I’d use a couple of buckets – didn’t work as well, but it helped. One tip – tie a smaller rope to the back of the funnel and tie the other end of the smaller rope to the loop where you tie the sea anchor onto the main rope. That way you can lift the thing from the back end. You’d think that you could lift the durn thing and all the water would run out the little hole at the back, but that is a whale of a lot harder than it sounds. Hard to explain, but you’ll see what I mean immediately when you try to get the thing out of the water.

By the way — Thanks!

So you guys are putting these things on a jig, instead of texas or carolina rigging them. I suspected that. That might explain the no walleyes when bassing thing. What do you suppose is the difference between a ringworm and any other worm?? Incidentally, my main use so far for those ring worms is dip-baiting catfish. I take half a ringworm and thread it on a baitholder hook, and dump it in the Bowkers or the Sonny’s sticky. I haven’t done this for a long time, but it is a good way to catch a lot of pan-sized cats, and a good way to fish with kids. The ringworms work just as well at holding the bait as do those more expensive catfish dipbait rigs.

Don’t know why people won’t believe me…. and I thought Missouri was the show-me state. I have seen lots of dolphins go by me like that while surf fishing. And, occasionally, I have had some close encounters with large sharks, although I have only seen them up close a few times. Most of the time, you don’t see them. I have had large fish taken off a stringer (leaving the head) that was attached to my waist several times – the fish hang off a float and the float is attached to about 30 feet of line before it gets to me. I used to swim shark baits out with a boogie board, dragging the bait behind me, with my wife or a buddy paying out line from the 9’0 or the 10’0 senator. I drop off the bait and swimm back. I was always afraid that a shark would take the bait while I was “trolling” it out there, but it never happened. I draw the line, though, at swimming the bait out at night. Tried that once, and it was too spooky. Once I was swimming the gut with medium heavy surf gear to get to a sandbar and casting out and then swimming back to the beach. I’d catch a small (3′) shark every time, and pretty quickly, sometimes before I even got out of the water. Finally, I got a bite while I was still swimming, so I free spooled the rod until I could stand up again, then I started to reel the fish in. When I got the fish about half-way through the gut I was swimming across, all heck broke loose. I had been reeling the fish in just fine, but then line started screaming off the spool. All I could do was hold on and watch the line disappear. Then, all of a sudden it was over. I started reeling in the fish like before. When I got the fish in, I could see what happened. A shark with a gape of about 10″ had picked up the smaller shark I was reeling in (while in the gut I had swam across), and swam off with it a ways, and then dropped it. The larger shark didn’t bite a chunk off; it just picked up the smaller one and swam. It was bleeding from all these little teeth marks in a big bite shape.

I’m pretty sure that’s a dolphin.

I think that one reason the bounty idea hasn’t taken off very well has to do with the number of fish, the area over which they are distributed, and lack of funds.

An aside – at a meeting once an aquaculture representative suggested subsidizing packing plants to take the fish. Incredibly, the suggestion was that fish coming from aquaculture industries would get the same subsidy! Now that takes gall. But the fact is that it would be hard to tell where the fish came from. If IL puts a bounty on the fish, whats to stop people fishing in MO from collecting the bounty? And there is the worry that people would move the fish to new locations just so they could collect bounty on fish caught there too. I come from a long line of commercial fishermen, and let me tell you I’ve never heard any of them tell a lie or do anything untoward. That they’d admit to anyway.

Thanks, B –
Those pictures of the fish are pretty good, except that bighead looks like it has a crease on its head; that is not normal. At this link is a thread where I posted pictures of the juveniles. Note how similar the silver carp is to the shad. If you catch your own bait, please use it in the place you caught it, both for reasons of zebra mussels and other invasive species.
http://www.in-depthangling.com/forums/river/showflat.php/Cat/0/Board/pool4/Number/65908/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/7/vc/1

The pool 9 dam is a very high one that makes a good barrier, is one reason why they are thinking about it there. Plus, just the speed at which things move and the time it takes to get people up in arms about this kind of thing.

There has been some talk about putting a bounty on the Asian carp in some parts of the Illinois and Des Plaines Rivers, to take some of the heat off the barrier. It would apply to commercial fishermen only, partly because thats the only people that are likely to catch many of them.

There are many, many, species of Asian carp. The ones that have been introduced into the US are the goldfish, the common carp, the four that people around here mean when they say “Asian carp”. Those four are the bighead, silver, black, and grass carp. Of those, only the black is not yet, as far as we know, established in the wild in the Mississippi River basin. The black carp is currently in use in aquaculture in the lower Mississippi Basin, so it is still a threat. There is also the crucian carp, which may or may not have been introduced in the US, along with goldfish,with which is it closely related. The crucian carp is not established in the US,that we know of. That’s good, because it is a major invasive species in parts of Europe. Common carp are originally from Asia, but we got them from Europe where they were already long-established, which is why you will sometimes hear them called European carp or German carp or Israeli carp. Bighead and silver carp are thought to eat primarily zooplankton and phytoplankton, by filter-feeding. Black carp are molluscivores. Grass carp primarily eat aquatic vegetation or, if they can get it, terrestrial vegetation.

The sonic bubble curtain will probably affect all species to some degree, but there is evidence that it can sometimes be “tuned” to affect certain fishes over others, but you can expect some overlap.

And I think that sunfish was a – oh, I forget now, could you remind me???

I learned today that the Corps got the money to build the barrier by zeroing out funding for lamprey control in the Great Lakes. Guess that will fix those Great Lakes politicos for threatening Gen. Flowers. I don’t know whether to blame expense or politics, but either way, the fisheries suffer.