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Our county is being overrun by Japanese beetles this year. I do not exagerate in saying that we have been throwing them away by the pound(s).
So, the question is, has anyone ever tried impaling one of these nasty things on a small hook? They're all shiny and have legs that stick out. I tried using June bugs earlier this year and the fish would spit them out, but I'm wondering about the JBs.. - Roberta
Beetles are used in fly fishing so I would think that live ones might be even better :). Don't know about Japanese ones though.
Fly fishing example high visibility "Foam Beetle" link:
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/flyt...te/part42.html
More:
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/alca.../ac053104.html
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/flyt...22605fotw.html
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/flyt...80601fotw.html
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/alca.../ac060704.html
This article says that Japanese Beetle flies have been used with success:
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/feat...to/part16.html
Back when we were kids we used them for Bluegill and Bass and would catch quite a few fish.
I now make Japanese Beetle flies out of foam with video tape film for backing.
I fish a small farm pond from time to time that has several of the Japanese beetle traps around the water. All you need to do to catch some of the large gills swimming there is pull a beetle off one of the shoreline trees and pitch it out under a small float. Maybe these fish are in the habit of eating the beetles because the traps, but they definately work. Just my input.
Take care,
Greenfish
Great, thanks. Good to know the danged things are good for something. I'll throw a handfull in the cricket cage and chill them a bit.
I was really disappointed the gills wouldn't hit the June bugs I caught. - Roberta
I cut the bottom off a bag and set up a trap with bottom of bag barely over the water. Beetles would go down bag, hit water and only get a few inches before fish would nail them. Kinda like chumming a hole...
Take those traps down and throw them away. They work by releasing a pheromone that attracts more. You ae compounding problems in your area by using them. I have hung a open trap over water before not sure if gills eat them or just attack them
. Gills we caught tossed up live ones in boat. If your raising sweet corn make sure to treat it cause they will eat silks before kernel formed.
I got years of experience with these growing up in the heart of 'Silent Spring' country.
They are bad here this year too.
You make a good point, Blufloyd and it's why I've never used them before. We had a bad outbreak last year and I wanted to try to catch as many as possible. We also use biological and soap sprays since we won't use petrochemical pesticides.
Here's the scary part: the neighbor's soybean field is being stripped so he sprayed yesterday, as have most farmers in the area. They have never had to do that before. His field corn surrounds our property or it would be worse.
We can thank global warming - we didn't get a winter kill last year and everything is out of whack. - Roberta
I have to disagree about the use of traps. We have a garden in which we grow beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, squash, sunflowers, peppers, and watermelon. Every year we used to be infested with the japanese beetles until we started using the traps about 5 years ago. We place the trap away from the garden near the corner of our lot. The first couple of years we were replacing the bags about twice a day for about a month. Since then the numbers have gone steadily down. This year we are replacing the bag once a week. We've hardly seen any beetles in out garden or flower beds this year. These traps work over a period of time as the beetles are no longer depositing their eggs in the soil around your home, thus reducing the numbers every year.
can someone tell me what a beetle trap looks like and how it works? we have them here too and might be cheap(free) bait
The trap we use is made by Spectracide and its called Bag a Bug. About $5 from Home Depot.
I have heard that there is nothing an individual can do, it has to be a community effort, spaying the ground with a substance called "milky spore". I did however have a plumb tree that would be destroyed every year by them. I cut it down and it seemed to help. There for a few years we were also over run with 'em but they seem to be diminishing. Not to many this year or last. Maybe they are nomadic. I have impaled them on a hook with success, but not with any consistancy.
fishinRod
don't know about using them for panfish, but when they infest trees overhanging a trout stream I can sure clean up on the browns and rainbows using one of their imitations. Come to think of it, it's about that time of year......
..since one river in the area has browns.
On the issue of beetle traps, we had trouble with critters ripping open the bags to get to the rotting bugs (I'm guessing 'coons that thought it was meat) so I switched to a bucket half-filled with water and a little soap The beetles fall right in, and I just dumped the mess in the cornfield every day or two. We use one of those short wrought iron shepherd's hooks made for hanging flower pots for our trap. - Roberta
I caught a nice 18 inch brown trout a few summers back that was gorging on japanese beetles. I have caught countless bluegills that were full of them. I think the idea of putting traps that cause the beetles to fall into the water is ingenious. If I had a pond I wouldn't hesitate to rig up some of these traps to help make the beetles more available to the fish. I remember we had problems with beetles in this part of NC when I was a kid, but they haven't been that much of a nuisance in the past few years. (now the fire ants and yellow jackets, that's a different story)