Mosquito fish instead of store bought minnows?

Does anyone use Mosquito fish for bait? Minnows are apparently very hard to come by in these parts in the summer. I haven't caught Mosquito fish to use for fishing in nearly 30 years. I honestly can't remember ever fishing with them as a teenager, maybe I just enjoyed catching them like I enjoyed walking creeks and catching crawfish. Just for the heck of it I guess.

I called around for minnows today and I can buy them at a minnow farm about 20 miles from here, but I have to buy at least 5 lbs at a time and I don't have a way to keep them from dying in the heat. So....

After work today, I regressed to my childhood methods and walked a storm drain, with a large minnow net and probably caught 10 dozen or so Mosquito fish. I will hopefully find out tomorrow how well they catch crappie, but just to be impatient I thought I'd ask if any of you ever fish with them?

They are apparently very easy to keep because this stream is absolutely thick with them and it has no deep water, so I know the water gets hot in the summer and icy in the winter.

I've got a old cattle water trough that I may try to "stock" and see how they do. I need another hobby. LOL

How about jigs instead of store-bought minnows?

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Originally Posted by deathb4disco

How about jigs instead of store-bought minnows?

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I'm definitely a jig guy. I haven't bought a pound of minnows in the past year, but in my very, very limited spider rigging experience (3 trips) that minnow makes em hold on a little longer. I've tried with and without and tomorrow, barring all of them dying tonight, I'll be tipping jigs with minnows.

Hey, if you can catch'em for free & keep'em alive .... go for it !! When I was a young'un, my Grandpa would dip Brook Silversides (what he called "skipjacks") at night and we'd fish with them for Crappie. I did it a few times in my late 20's and wore out the Crappie with them. When my buddy & I had used up all the live ones in the bucket, I asked him "heads or tails" ... and cut the dead ones in half & we still caught Crappie on them.

Brook Silversides - what you see jumping/skipping across the shallows in the early morning & late evening hours. They eat micro-crustaceans, midge larvae, and small flying insects. I've also seen them jump after bugs flying under dock lights & even my old Coleman lanterns (back in my youth)

http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/Portals/...silverside.jpg

Could you please take a photo of the mosquito fish? We used to have a lot of top water minnows in the streams here in TN. Ours are just about gone. They are really good for smallmouth. They would pull the hook and split shot to the surface when a smallmouth bass got after them. Thanks

I’ll have to wait until I catch more of them for a picture. Most of the ones that I caught yesterday were belly up this morning. The ones that weren’t dead are now mixed in with some toughies that I went and bought during storm delay #1. I don’t remember keeping an aerator in with them when I was a young un but maybe I did. They look a whole lot like guppies. I use to have an aquarium when I was a kid and I had guppies in it. They may be the same thing except these don’t have a colorful tail. We’re on storm delay #2 at the moment. Eating lunch now.

BTW, crappie like them just fine and so do bass. My son caught his PB largemouth this morning on one. 6lb 4 oz. That was a load on a 16’ Jenko.

Years ago I threw a few leftover shinners in our ornamental pond. Within a month 6 turned into hundreds. First cold snap killed them all.

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Originally Posted by tnduxcaller

Could you please take a photo of the mosquito fish? We used to have a lot of top water minnows in the streams here in TN. Ours are just about gone. They are really good for smallmouth. They would pull the hook and split shot to the surface when a smallmouth bass got after them. Thanks

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Eastern Mosquito fish (female) :

http://www.filmingflorida.com/wp/wp-...20_01_2928.jpg

The Male Mosquito fish does not have the black marking at the base of the stomach area.

How far are you from Guntersville? I think Guntersville Tackle Outdoors carries minnows year round.

From my trials and errors and more errors, mosquito fish aren't very hook durable. Goldfish, if legal, are 2nd best bait for crappie and on another legal basis, tiny bluegills caught on #16 fly hooks. Never tried goldfish(crackers count?) but did catch a big slab on a quarter sized Gill.

I would be careful about using mosquito fish, as they are not native to most of Northern Alabama:

https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/Fact...?speciesID=849

They're also called Top Dodgers around central NC pretty often. We've got a lot of them. I knew a pond in Apex we called the bait pond, (it got bulldozed for a subdivision about 15 years ago) that was filthy with 'em. We'd seine mosquito fish by the thousands from that pond and use some for bait, then release the leftovers where we were fishing.

Back in 1985 a man hired me to get some Top Dodgers for a new 6 acre pond he'd built. We went to his pond first and filled big plastic bags with water from his pond, then we went to the bait pond and caught thousands of mosquito fish for him. A couple months later, he called again offering to pay for all the 6+ inch shellcrackers I could get him. It was a fun thing getting paid for fishing. I rounded up several dozen from a few different ponds & lakes that we stocked his pond with. To this day, his pond regularly produces seriously big shellcrackers.

Jim

Thanks for the picture ! Those look good! Fur u may want to contact those folks and let them know that u have some them! last report in Bama was 1992 ! U may be famous or sum pen!

Thanks for all the replies. I'll check with GT&O. They're across the big pond (Guntersville) from me, but I can get there from here. Regarding them not being native to this area, that may be so, but me using them in Guntersville will have no effect on the lake. I could have thrown a Bobby Garland on a 1/16 ounce jig head from the stream where I caught them and hit the lake. If they're in that stream by the millions, then they're already in the lake.

Mitch where did you see that about them not being reported since 1992? On 2nd thought, maybe I better not call them. They might block my access to "free" fish bait. LOL

I couldn't tell much difference in them and the store bought minnows, except the adult mosquito fish are what I consider to be the perfect size for crappie fishing. The store where I like to buy minnows was closed and I had to buy some that are plenty large enough to bass fish with for in the morning. Be lucky to catch a crappie on them. They wouldn't touch a big minnow today.

Regarding using minnows. I use what works for me, whether it's jigs or minnows. I'd love to never buy another minnow because they're expensive and take too much time to rig up, but there are days like today when they wouldn't hit a jig. We probably caught 55-60 crappie today of all sizes and less than 10 fish came off jigs and over half of them came off one color. We were using 4 poles with jigs and 4 poles with minnows. I don't think I'm patient enough to fish 8 poles with double minnow rigs. LOL

The only jigs we really caught any crappie on were BGBS Electric Chicken, sprayed with Slab Sauce. I tried 10-12 different colors and used Slab Sauce on them all. I can really only remember 3 fish caught on jigs that weren't caught on electric chicken and those 3 were tipped with a minnow. I didn't catch a fish on an electric chicken jig that wasn't sprayed with Slab sauce either. Slab sauce definitely made a difference on the bites on plastic. If I hadn't only had 3 electric chicken jig bodies in the boat, we might have done real well on them. I remedied that on the way home.

Fishing with minnows is simple and reminiscent of the "good old days". As I get older sitting on a bank watching a bobber is starting to have a renewed appeal.

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Originally Posted by FurFlyin

Does anyone use Mosquito fish for bait? Minnows are apparently very hard to come by in these parts in the summer. I haven't caught Mosquito fish to use for fishing in nearly 30 years. I honestly can't remember ever fishing with them as a teenager, maybe I just enjoyed catching them like I enjoyed walking creeks and catching crawfish. Just for the heck of it I guess.

I called around for minnows today and I can buy them at a minnow farm about 20 miles from here, but I have to buy at least 5 lbs at a time and I don't have a way to keep them from dying in the heat. So....

After work today, I regressed to my childhood methods and walked a storm drain, with a large minnow net and probably caught 10 dozen or so Mosquito fish. I will hopefully find out tomorrow how well they catch crappie, but just to be impatient I thought I'd ask if any of you ever fish with them?

They are apparently very easy to keep because this stream is absolutely thick with them and it has no deep water, so I know the water gets hot in the summer and icy in the winter.

I've got a old cattle water trough that I may try to "stock" and see how they do. I need another hobby. LOL

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Buy a pair of tilapia and use the babies as bait. That's what we use.

Sent from my XT1585 using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

In the Ozarks using a minnow seine and minnow traps was so common years ago almost all rednecks,hillbillies,white trash,deplorables,what ever you want to call us.....had them. Usually caught bait and fish from the same waters. It was actually fun...not so much when your old...