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Growing up I loved fishing..... even as a young adult and tent camping enjoyed fishing. Fishing meant baiting the hook, catching the fish then taking the fish off the hook -- and it ended there. Never cleaned or cooked a fish. Wondering if there are any fisherwomen here that fish in the Southeast USA. Sure would LOVE to meet up just to learn more and fall in love with freshwater fishing again.

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I suppose if I liked you better, you could come here and practice your fishing - just not the murdering and cooking part...
We could practice cooking store-bought fish.

But that first supposition is a mighty big one. Just sayin'.
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My favorite memories are of fishing with my grandpa. We would sit there in the boat and talk, throw back everything we had caught. When finished, we'd go back to the house, pickup grandma and head over to the Knight of Columbus for the all you can eat fish fry dinner. We got to fish, have our fish dinner and not "stink up" grandma's house (as she put it).

I miss fishing and I can do the cleaning part and the cooking part. However, I hate to cook. I did acquire (inherited) a couple of fishing poles this past summer and my plan is to busy doing some fishing real soon.

Well, I'm not in the Southeast but I do fish. And bait my own hook and remove my own fish. I have cleaned a fish (or two) and seen my DH filet them so I do know how to do that. As far as cooking them, that's his job. I draw the line there. But he does a bang up job of it, to say the least. Oh and I can launch a boat, too.

My dad cooking fresh fish in a cast iron skillet over a camp fire......one of my memories of camping in the early years. Blue gill was some of the tastiest!

Been a long time since I fished but I did enjoy it. Grew up in a family of fishing lovers. Even my Mom enjoyed it, though she let Dad bait the hook and take care of cleaning fish. I learned to do it all from hooking up the worms to cleaning and cooking, mostly trout. Would love someday to learn fly fishing. Mel does not like catching or eating fish of any kind so I'm on my own in that pursuit.
Velda

bluepinecones wrote:Mitch - do you really have any fish left in your pond?

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My friend Phyllis' husband, last Christmas, was catching between 30 and 40 large mouth bass a day.
But since that die-off when George was sick in 2011, no one has caught (or seen) a catfish.
Haven't seen a brim in years...we figure they were all eaten when we introduced large mouth bass to the front pond.
I mainly feed the turtles.
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mitch5252 wrote:

bluepinecones wrote:Mitch - do you really have any fish left in your pond?

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My friend Phyllis' husband, last Christmas, was catching between 30 and 40 large mouth bass a day.
But since that die-off when George was sick in 2011, no one has caught (or seen) a catfish.
Haven't seen a brim in years...we figure they were all eaten when we introduced large mouth bass to the front pond.
I mainly feed the turtles.
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Maybe you feed the catfish and brim to the turtles? Are they snappers?

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There were very few turtles when all the fish were around. Then in 2011 (end of summer), there was a huge die-off for whatever reason. George was in the hospital, so I really didn't care about dozens of dead fish...

I think the brim were all eaten by the bass and some of the bass survived the die-off and have grown pretty big. The catfish did not survive the die-off, and I thought I read somewhere years ago that catfish don't reproduce in ponds? Anyone know if that's true?

Anyway, I'm down to bass and turtles in the front pond.
I don't think they're snapping turtles - maybe just plain, ol' Tennessee pond turtles.

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Ok good, thought I'd have to put in a call to the Turtleman for help with your turtles!

Kathy, wouldn't you want to see the show that Mitch and Turtle Man could make.

I don't know if catfish reproduce in a pond but I bet they do. When we built the first pond we didn't stock it right away and we were finding carp and mud catfish in there. Someone told me that birds can transport fish eggs on their legs and that's how we got fish. We built a second pond after Hurricane Rita for the dirt to build our hill for the house. Both ponds were flooded again for Hurricane Ike. I was afraid all our fish would have left or died from the salt water but instead I was catching strange fish that might have been salt water fish. We even had crabs in the ponds for a while. After Ike I caught some White Perch which I though only lived in big lakes. It has been over a year since I have fish in there. Harold won't mow the pasture and it's a hike to get to the ponds with all the fishing stuff. There are cows in the pasture now so I need to see if they have the grass down.

I keep hoping for a golf cart to get around in but since you can buy a used car for what they want for a golf cart I don't think Santa is bringing a golf cart.

Martha

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Martha, would it have been possible for ALL the catfish to have died? If they breed in ponds, I would have thought Phil would have caught at least one since 2011. Oh, well - nature will take its course. I always catch a great blue heron at the edge of the pond - maybe he'll drop some cool fish eggs!

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I don't know much about pond ecology. We had talked to someone from the Agg department about stocking the pond years ago. About the only thing I remember him saying was that since our ponds were deep we could have a water inversion that would kill fish. I think that is caused by temperature changes. I don't think we have ever had a bunch of fish die or if they did I missed it.

Martha