macfish
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Posts posted by macfish
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macfish here. Graham, I looked around a bit more and found out that there appear to be several species in the family of fish known as the Synbranchids. They are not true eels but are called swamp eels. The fish that I mentioned earlier are from a genus called Monopterus and they are commonly called swamp eels and are originally from Asia. These are the invasive ones that are now being found in southern Florida. The ones that I did a bit more searching on before, and is perhaps what you have actually caught, are from the genus Synbranchus and are also called swamp eels, but they are native to South America. It appears that there are 3 species of Synbranchus in Brazil, but by far the most common one seems to be Synbranchus marmoratus, commonly know as the marbled swamp eel. Here is a link to a PDF file on a new specie of swamp eel that was found in Northern Brazil (the state of Para). You may find the information that you need in this article to determine whether what you have caught is an example of Monospterus or Synbranchus. Either way it is still a cool catch! Cheers, Jonathan
www.ufrgs.br/ni/vol3num3/artigo01.pdf
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macfish here. Graham, I might be wrong about this, but what you caught may not be native to Brazil. There are "Asian" swamp eels (Monopterus albus is one specie), and apparently some were brought to Brazil, got loose in Brazil just like African bees and now they have arrived as well in the U.S. Here they were apparently intentionally released by folks who have a hankering for their flesh. (Reminds me of Asian snakeheads.) Here is an interesting take on the whole thing and an informative one as well on the invasives:
http://blogs.princeton.edu/pia/personal/ep...xenophobia.html
http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/aquatics/swampeel.shtml
Jonathan
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macfish here. Graham, congratulations on your catch. When you brought them up here I did a search on them through Google and I even found a page about a new one recently discovered in Brazil which I think they call the vampire swamp eel. It had a really neat pattern on its skin. I was actually surprised at the size of the one you caught. I kind of expected it to be a bit longer. Jonathan
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macfish here. I stumbled into this website looking for stuff about a North American fish called chubb. These are taxidermist mounted fish from the late 19th, mid 20th century, but most of them are Victorian around the 1910s and 1920s. Some of the fish are salmon, chub, roach, pike, barbel, perch, dace, rudd, tench, bream (all mounted in glass). They are excellent mounts and very interesting to look at. They often have the dates caught, where, usually length and circumference and weight as well and sometimes the angler who caught them as well. Fascinating stuff. Jonathan
http://www.taxidermy4cash.com/Fish.html
Here's an image of a 9lb. bream which has been mounted and is pretty typical of the collection:
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macfish here. Joey, congrats on helping your stepson to get started right! Please give your stepson my congratulations as well. Very nice fish! Jonathan
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macfish here. Mario, I still have the book somewhere, but for the life of me every time I have looked I couldn't find it. I believe it was written in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was not a long book, maybe 40 to 60 pages and I bought it at a used bookstore in Chicago around 1985 or '86. The size of it was somewhat small as well - maybe 5" by 7." They were still using fiberglass rods and I believe no electronic alarms yet at the time it was published. There were some things in the book about shelters (bivvies, brollies) and rod rests and the fishing was all done in canals. Jonathan
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macfish here. Rick, great pictures as always and some spectacular fish. Great show all! Jonathan
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macfish here. Corey, congrats to all of you, especially to Felisha for her new PB. Very nice looking fish! !onathan
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macfish here. Uwe, welcome to the forum! You mentioned using corn and potatoes for bait for carp. I first read about fishing for carp back in the early 1980s. It was in a book written by two Dutch gentlemen and they were using small potatoes which they boiled and then used as bait by pulling the hook into them and holding them on the hook with a chunk of bread crust. They called the potatoes "boilies." Is that how you use potatoes? Jonathan
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macfish here. Great job with those fantastic fish! Wow, breaking gear, PBs and anything else in sight. Sounds like you all had a lot of fun. Thanks for sharing them with us. Jonathan
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macfish here. Brian, very nice fish there! Boy, you folks in the Volunteer state sure know how to sniff out the nice fish. I guess you deserve them after all the hard work you put in. Jonathan
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macfsih here. Alabamacarphunter, great catches! You're lucky, those are just ones that you have there. Those suckers can get big, like 20 to 50 or more lbs. There are three species, the smallmoutn that you have there, the bigmouth which looks similar but has a more standard looking mouth which has an opening roughly in line with the lateral line and a black buffalo which evidently looks a lot like the smallmouth buffalo with darker color and a few small differences. I thought I saw smaller piece of the rod laying next to the main body. Ouch!
Jonathan -
macfish here. Okay, take this with a big grain of salt because I have not yet caught carp on a fly. I do have a fair amount of past experience fly fishing and I've caught a few carp along the way using other methods. I personally would not give up on blind casting just because in some waters that is all you could do anyway. For me in northeastern Missouri most of our local waters are often very muddy (maybe 1-3" visibility), so as far as being able to SEE the fish to cast to them it just ain't gonna happen. In that case there isn't any choice. You either cast blind and fish very carefully and cautiously or give up, spend $50 for gas money driving to fish somewhere that has clear waters. Some indicators will still be useful even in muddy waters: watching for jumping carp, looking for feeding carp (circles or clooping fish on the surface) or bubbles coming up from the bottom. I caught a nice bullhead catfish (1 1/2lb) on a small jig fly on a fly rod from the bottom of a muddy stream and it gave me one very nice fight! If nothing else you'll certainly get great casting practice. It all depends on what you're willing to do. Jonathan
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macfish here. As soon as I saw it I got a warm feeling in my heart.
Jonathan -
macfish here: Here is Missouri's which is a correction over what is listed on the CAG site:
Russell Tarr Rothwell Park Lake 50lb. 6oz.
Jonathan
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macfish here. I have never seen nor caught any fish that looked anything like that. I'm wondering if a fish that morbidly obese could even give much of a fight? It looks like it would be more like a wall of slow moving wiggles. That linear carp that Fitz said he liked - is it being held by the same gentleman who is pictured with the new world record? Jonathan
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macfish here. kyron4, one of our esteemed members, Big Carphuna (Scott) did a thread two winters ago about ice fishing for carp and he did indeed actually catch carp out from under the ice (after drilling a hole to retrieve them). I think there was also another thread maybe last winter showing Scott and others members catching carp at the edge of ice on the River Charles? There's a long history to this because one of our other esteemed members - phone - our resident expert who is never wrong insists in his "White Paper" (you need to get a copy of this from him) that carp never feed when the water temperature is below 50 degrees F. Maybe others will pipe in here and add their experiences/reflections. Jonathan
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macfish here. I can't rmember for sure but I either got mine on Friday or Saturday. It's absolutely fantastic! I have seen and read my share of fishing magazines over the year, and this is one to be proud of. My hat is off to all who contributed/participated! Jonathan
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Thanks fellers!
To be honest.... I totally creeped myself out taking spider pictures with just the light of a fading headlamp...
It seems the spiders came up off the forest floor to hunt the bark of a nearby stump at night. Cool.
Jonathan there: A video camera is in the works for 2008....
Can't wait!!!!Very much appreciate the support Gents!
CarpDaddy
macfish here. Rick, my digital camera gave up the ghost (A Nikon but it was only a 3.2MP) but I do have a Canon Elura digital camcorder and finally got the right Firewire cable and figured out how to get the snippets into the Mac and iMovie to do a bit of tinkering. I haven't had much time to do anything with it, but this could be a whole lot of fun! Jonathan
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macfish here. Great fish Jim. Congrats on your new PB! Jonathan
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macfish here. Rick, as great as your tellin' is, I can't wait for your first carpin' video. Great job and fine fish! Jonathan
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macfish here. Scott, way to go. What a fantastic fish! Jonathan
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macfish here. Guys, I almost felt like I was there with you. Great fish you've got there! Great to see that things are still carrying on whether you have water or not. (Save those pictures and make maps of everything because you'll need them when the water is back up again.) Next I bet you'll be bringing in fish with helmets full of water on their heads (like the heavy duty diving gear with the brass helmets and lead boots) and wet blakets wrapped around them to keep them from drying out. It was a treat to be talking on the phone with you and guys on both ends getting fish!
Jonathan -
macfish here. I got up pretty early today and was on the water about 5:45AM. It doesn't get light here until about 6:45, so I putzed around setting up my gear. Once the sky started lightening up the fish got very active, the most active I've ever seen them. On a very active day at this lake I might see 6 - 8 carp jump out of the water. This morning I was thinking that I might see about 30 in an hour because they were so active. Later on there was a period where I was probably seeing 10 to 15 per minute and all sizes from 6 inchers up to about 20lbers jumping out and that was anywhere from 8 feet off shore to several hundred yards out. The fish were biting as well. I didn't want to putz around with chumming or method mix (probably a big mistake today) so I just used range cubes and Mainline Tutti Frutti popups as bait. My total was four fish banked, three were about 5 -7 lbs. and the last one was a scrappy pounder, all very nice and healthy. There were other bites as well. I had one line in where I left about three feet of slack line on the bank and they would take the line out slowly but then be gone. I called up the Captain (Horace) on the phone about 9:30AM and had my only double at the same time! Both of us had runs while talking so we had a few interruptions along the way. Nothing like talking to someone and hearing an alarm sounding and then they say, "I've got to run!"
Jonathan
My Smallest Bass on Hook
in Other Species Stories
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macfish here. Rick, to tell you the truth I just thought I had a piece of trash on the line. Well, on second thought some other people might think that is what I had on the line. LOL - Just kidding. Bass are okay for two or three leaps and then they're spent. Poor little fish. I can't believe they give millions of dollars away each year at tournaments to catch them. That ain't a challenge. That's what I'd call practice. Jonathan