Today I made a quick trip (not much time here) to the eastern banks of the mighty Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, PA. The location was about 1/4 mile south of the Rt 462 bridge. My brother maintains a boat dock there and I had dropped my wire cage minnow trap there two days ago. My goal was to catch feeder minnows for my pair of redfin pickerels. The redfins are about 7-8 inches each. The minnow trap was lousy containing two rather mean looking craygish and a 1 inch juvenile redeye bass. I am using dry dogfood as bait, does anyone have any suggestions? How do I keep the crays out?

As long as I was there, I got out my Perfect Dipnet (thanks Jonah's!) and figured I'd take a few swipes through the vallisneria. Now my brothers dock sits in a whopping 30 inches of water and is literally surrounded by beds of the vals. I could see small one inch minnows everywhere and did net a dozen or so. No pics but I am guessing they are emerald shiners. My pumpkinseeds enjoy them.

The substrate the vals grow in is usually gravel but the river flow had brought an inch or two of silt in over the last few weeks. As I swiped down along the bottom I was a bit suprised to net a few gizzard shad:



These were about two inches long so I saved four for the redfins. Then my next few swipes revealed a bit of a surprise: Juvenile carp!Ugh, these little things were 2-3 inches and smelled awful. Even worse was the slime coating them.



I netted dozens of these and kept six of them as food. Since they were so slimy and smelly, I wasn't sure the redfins would eat them (yeah, right!).

The good news is, the redfins do indeed eat juvenile carp. They went after the gizzard shad first but then they noticed the pumpkinseeds harrassing the carp. That was all the prompting they needed. Boom, no more carp! I tried to get a picture of the redfins eating the shad and carp but had no luck. All of the fish were literally zooming around the tank and the pics blurred badly. If anyone has any suggestions for getting such pics, I'd love to hear them.

Keep the trap suspended off the bottom to catch less crays. Rusty crayfish now dominant the Susquehanna so there isn't much you can do other than not putting a trap in the water to keep them away.

hey dmarkley if you happen to catch any kind of bass in your nets u should holler at me... im looking to find some i could come buy and pick um up. i live near lancaster county.

Catching largemouth bass in nets is not legal, nor is their sale by an individual. Sale of a gamefish typically requires a commercial fishing license and the species to be approved for commercial fishing.

Yes, the Fish & Boat Commission officers are polite and friendly but I doubt they'd appreciate keeping undersized bass.

Try some small pieces of white styrofoam. It shouldn't attract crays. No guarantee on that though. An minners seem to be attracted to it from what I have seen.

alright i found some place that will sell them to me .. thats legal right.?

alright i found some place that will sell them to me .. thats legal right.?

Assuming that you are either within the possession limit of 50, or have a receipt from the bait dealer, then yes.