There's a pic of a big head that was shot in LOZ recently. It weighed 95 lbs. odd color. It is gold and white. My question is how did they get in there? I thought they appeared with the silver carp. That lake has been around a long time.
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There's a pic of a big head that was shot in LOZ recently. It weighed 95 lbs. odd color. It is gold and white. My question is how did they get in there? I thought they appeared with the silver carp. That lake has been around a long time.
They were hauled up from Arkansas and sold as bait (crappie minnows to be exact) before any of us knew what a "bighead carp" was.
I figured that is how they got n there.
Not so sure that's how they got in there, at least that's a theory I have not heard of. I always imagined it was likely a careless cat fisherman who netted some "shad" below bagnal then went fishing up in the lake. Either way, it doesn't matter because they are there now. A few years back a guy snagged a very large bighead in LOZ. I think that fish went over 100 lbs. I know another fellow that shot one bowfishing but it pulled off of the arrow. But all I have heard of are big head, not silvers. The orange color is odd, I've not seen one like that.
That would make sense that it got netted with Shad. But now very difficult to find any shad in rivers.
If you had seen the "minnows" back in the mid-late 1980's there'd be no doubt in your mind. They had a name for them that escapes me now (I wanna say "Fatty's" but I don't think that was it). They were very Hardy, would live for days in a bucket and damn near all day long on a hook, had the weird eyes and everything, and quite a few of them had crazy color patterns on them. I remember them vividly because I worked part time at a baitshop back then and they sold them for a couple years.
The first time I ever saw a GROWN UP one was about 1992-93 when a guy caught one on a trotline and the baitshop owner called MDC to come and see what the hell it was. A young Greg Stoner came to the bait shop, took pictures, then later identified it.
They were raising them in Arkansas, selling some for bait and bigger ones were supposedly sold for control of algae in irrigation ponds.
At least that's what we were told at that time.
As I remember the Silvers and bigheads didn't start showing up in the Osage below Bagnell until 5 or so years later.
I'm not sure those are the same LOzark. I fish Norfork Lake out of Gamaliel Arkansas every May and they still sell those minnows down there. If they truly were bighead carp, I would hope they would have figured it out by now and stopped selling them. That said, they do look an awful lot alike.