Fishing for bait

[no1son]

Greenies are widely adapted and can be invasive if introduced into waters that do not have them. Once you got em you generally got em for ever.

They are excellent bait where they already exist, both for catfish, especially flatheads and bass from Iowa south. While they are illegal to use as bait up here, muskies around here prefer sunfish to the legally available suckers and bullheads. One sees some idiot use them every once in a while with often dramatic success. There are times when the uninformed who bait with sunfish simply cannot get the bait back out of the water before a muskie grabs it. Just one better not get caught by the game wardens doing it. The penalty is stiff.

[no1son]

Back some 40 years ago, I spent a winter in Tampa. Down there the local golden shiners were used in some pretty large sizes, as much as 8 to 10 inches, for bass. One caught one's own on a tiny little hook baited with a bit of bread. Back then they were fished live under a bobber at the edge of hyacinth beds. They are as good as shad for catfish cut bait too. We have them up here too and they are excellent walleye bait and in the smaller sizes for larger crappies, too, but we cannot get them regularly from the baitshops. Since that septicemia deal blew up around the Great Lakes an in Wisconsin, Minnesota has shut off a whole lot of outside cultured bait and that includes those shiners.

[Slabs Inc]

Those are very good/easy to catch flat head bait. We call em "black perch" I know it's a green sunfish. Big hook right behind the dorsal fin.