Thread: Incredibly Inaccurate Fish

Probably harder for a crappie since they are more of an ambush predator, not big on chasing dinner. With aquarium so clear baitfish see him coming so no ambush, lot's of misses. Turn off the light at night and I bet the crappie is more successful and you'll see fewer minnows in the morning but you don't get to see it eat.

Very cool bro. Did ya name your “pet”?

Originally Posted by JUNGLEJIMJIGS

Probably harder for a crappie since they are more of an ambush predator, not big on chasing dinner. With aquarium so clear baitfish see him coming so no ambush, lot's of misses. Turn off the light at night and I bet the crappie is more successful and you'll see fewer minnows in the morning but you don't get to see it eat.

within basically seconds of the lights out , YES SIR , that there crappie comes out and goes after them , but to be very sure of this , it still missed 99% of them on the strike and in some cases I was sure it was over with and no dice , off went the baitfish all freaked out ....

Originally Posted by BuckeyeCrappie

Very cool bro. Did ya name your “pet”?

nope , the jury is out on if it stays with us long enough to get a name ....
I typically release wild critters back to where they came from if we decide to keep one a bit ...
some stay a week or so and some maybe a month , but 99% go free pretty quickly ....
we used to raise baby turtles to big enough to stand a chance ,about a year on them ....
but in the end , it ain't really all that right to cage a free range critter for very long ....
wild critters do not really make very good "pets" most of the time from what I have seen ....
we released "Ivy" this spring , she was the lost box turtle that showed up 3 years ago in our yard ....
she did really well the first 2 years and was what we deemed to be pretty happy ....
she came when called to eat and knew my wife's voice well ...but ...
she came out of hibernation this year in full on I have to go mode ....
she lost her turtle mind and it was obvious she was miserable ....
I tend to think it was based on her urge to mate , not sure , but one thing for certain , she stopped and looked over her shoulder at me as she crawled off into the blackberry thicket for about 30 seconds or so and had a for sure look on her face of I hope this ain't a mistake .....

The crappie I caught and put in my tank one died early on from stress I assume. The other never did eat worms and I bought some minnows. I too have yet to see him eat one but they are disappearing from the tank. My wife however did see him eat a minnow. It surprised her how fast it was. The bluegill has come to love the nightly feedings of worms. He really is a better fish in the aquarium and knows the deal now.

Originally Posted by SuperDave336

The crappie I caught and put in my tank one died early on from stress I assume. The other never did eat worms and I bought some minnows. I too have yet to see him eat one but they are disappearing from the tank. My wife however did see him eat a minnow. It surprised her how fast it was. The bluegill has come to love the nightly feedings of worms. He really is a better fish in the aquarium and knows the deal now.

we think it ate a worm last night in the dark , it was there when we hit the lights and we saw some light movement and some back to its spot and some jaw stretching and turned the light back on and the worm was gone ...
one thing for certain , some minnows are way smarter than others , one stays away from the pack hiding above the power head where it isn't visible from below the surface ....and it will run back to that spot fast as heck if you run it off from it's hiding spot .....smart one no doubt ....

Had a couple of small Crappie in my 40gal, years ago. They attacked minnows with a vengeance whenever they were introduced into the tank, and it didn't matter if the minnows were put in two at a time or five or six at a time. Minnows didn't stay around more than a day or so. Even saw the Crappie stand on their heads to trap a minnow against the bottom gravel, when said minnow tried to hide underneath the Crappie.
Biggest mistake I made with them was introducing a small Warmouth into the mix. Didn't matter whether I added a nightcrawler or a handful of minnows with him in the mix, as he made short work of them, many times before the Crappie even had a chance to single out one. Kinda funny to watch him chase after a lone minnow with minnow tails & a nightcrawler tail hanging out of his mouth.

I kept a pair of crappie and a mini LMB over the winter in a 100 gallon tank about 35 years ago. They went on a feeding frenzy anytime new meat was added to the tank. The bass was more likely to go after nightcrawlers first, but the crappie definitely ate them. I saw the crappie eat minnows some of the time, though mine weren't deadly accurate and missed quite often. I'd hear splashes at night sometimes,so I figured they were on the hunt. I learned not to put crayfish in the tank, as the one I put in there caught & ate the baby bass.

Jim