Johnsfolly

@Quillback and @Dutch out making it happen. Not a bad day. You will find that top water bite again😉

#17 Lifer for 2024 - Oriental Weatherfish. Thought that this would fall under a swamp species but caught it in a clear stream in the middle of town in NJ. #18 Lifer - Banded Sunfish. This one is a swamp fish species. Caught in the Pinelands of NJ. Still plugging away at my 2024 goals😉😁. Did fish for skipjacks but no luck. Not sure if I will have another chance at them this year. Still might get a sauger in WV if I can get out there before year's end.

Congrats on having a great trip Jeff! Definitely a couple of nice bass photos. Good job on finding the topwater bite. So much fun watching them blowup on a bait.

Congrats on a beautiful trout!

One that size would be great to just put it on a spit whole and roast it 🤔😉

That looks delicious. What a great mushroom!

Still trying for lifers since I got back from Missouri trip. Tried for fathead minnows in a pond up in PA. Saw them and had bites but no hook ups before the rain drove us off the pond. Did catch one juvenile goldfish. Last Friday we fished a creek out in western MD hoping for longnose dace or silverjaw minnows. Caught lots of variety including common shiner, spotfin shiners, swallowtail shiners, bluehead chubs, smallmouth bass, redbreast sunfish, bluegill and green sunfish. But the lifers were elusive and we looked towards our next trip (the next day 😉). We headed to the pinelands portion of NJ hoping to find and catch banded sunfish. If there was still time left to the day we would try a couple of salty spots. Not hard to see why this area was called the pinelands. Lots of pines and lots of cranberry bogs and farms. Also a lot of the tannic acid swamp loving species like mud sunfish, swamp darters, banded and black-banded sunfish. We got to the target location and the water was shallow but there were a lot of fish in the deeper areas. It was almost too easy to catch a lifer banded sunfish but we did anyways 😁. Livie's banded We caught a few each then got lunch and hit Tuckerton bay in hopes of catching a northern kingfish. You can just see some buildings in Atlantic city in this photo. We used a double hook rig with bloodworms and a 2 oz sinker. We only caught croaker, spot and silver perch. The bite was still pretty slow and after an hour we headed to Barnegat inlet. We enjoy dropping baits (aka punching holes) down into the rocks of the jetty for cunner and tautog, aka blackfish. There is something very satisfying when you drop the sinker, bounce it a little bit and have it drop your bait into a deep hole that you couldn't see. You just know that you are going to get a bite. Getting the fish out of that same hole may be a much bigger challenge. Still fishing the bloodworms on a single hook rig with small one oz sinker, we ended up with black sea bass, cunner and tautogs. Finally caught a lifer for both of us and had a good day. As the sun was setting, we headed home.

I was travelling back and forth from here to Missouri a lot that first 18 months and spent a lot of time in hotels🙄.

I have put off making this post due mainly to time constraints. Many on here may know that though my Wife, youngest daughter and I have been living out in Maryland for the last 7 years, my son and his family are still out in KS and now my oldest daughter is in Louisville KY. We had a planned reunion trip back in September to see them all and have some fun in the KC area. With any travel, especially when it's out beyond a day away by car, I like to plan a fishing trip or two to try for new species, aka lifers. We had plans to drive out to Louisville and then onto KC. I would go out to Ft Riley and pick up my son and family and then back to the Great Wolf lodge. After a few days we would make the return trip. I didn't make big plans for any fishing stops on the way out. The only one was to try a small creek in KS prior to getting my son. Most of the plans were to stop at several spots on the way home with a lot of hope for fishing near my daughter in Kentucky. (this will be photo heavy for @snagged in outlet 3😉) I tried the KS creek prior to picking up my son. I was hoping for redfin shiners or Johnny darters. With only 35 mins to fish I did catch fish but nothing new 😐. I did see a large flock of turkeys with several heavy longbeards. No hunting in this preserve. Southern Redbelly dace Plains Orangethroat darter Common Shiner I did one planned night trip in KS. Again hoping for Johnny darters as well as stonecats. I got frustrated by a lot of spooky madtoms and non-biting darters. After a while I was fishing under a rock where I saw a dark striped madtom, I ended up catching a slender madtom instead. I did mention that this was a family reunion at Great Wolf Lodge😉 This igloo cooler with wheels was the best $30 spent. The grandkids spent a lot of time pulling each other around in it. As we were heading home we spent a day in Columbia. I fished a creek where I had thought I had seen Johnny darters. I fished for an hour or so and only caught Orangethroat darters. I couldn't be unhappy since this was the first microfish that we had ever caught and got us into microfishing back i nteh early days of my obssession😅. I had a couple of other creeks near Columba for possible redfins and Johnny darters. Low water and steep muddy banks kept me from fishing those effectively or at all in the couple of hours I had available to fish. When we headed to Louisville, I had a couple of spots that held headwater darters and a whole slough of possible species. One of the early tropical storms came and dumped 1.5 to 2 inches of rain and blew out all of my target creeks. The rain so soured my mood that we didn't even get up to Florence to see @Daryk Campbell Sr. Now that my daughter lives there it will be easier to justify going back. We took off for West Virginia to fish a couple of creeks. WV did not get the rain so they were at normal or low flows. The first stop was a creek that I had caught my only western blacknose dace a few years back and I wanted Livie to get a chance at them. The creek was nearly dry but there was a plunge pool below a little spillway that had fish - actually a lot of fish 😉. It didn't take long to get several fish in the photo bags including Livie's lifer W blacknose dace. Lots of creek chubs A couple of S redbelly dace including this nice male. Livie even found a queen snake. The last spot that we fished was up near Morgantown WV. The target was banded darters. I should have brought a small meshed net, since we hooked and lost several before getting them in hand and one was likely a banded darter 😒. We did catch rainbow darters and I had one rosyface shiner (crappy photos). Since I was targeting darters and shiners, all of these fish were caught on microhooks and Tanagos with small pieces of worm. We had fun and I was pretty frustrated about not catching a single lifer, but I will get over it on the next trip out that way.

And even more so now that she is retired😉. Looking forward to so many new adventures from you two

Livie finally found some giant puffballs mushrooms. We harvested three of the mid sized ones that seemed fairly young. We cubed up some and breaded with Panko and served with a spicy aioli.

Seems about right😉😁

This year I have been having my daughter make my award winning buffalo wing sauce. Yes I did win a wing cook off with this sauce and I have the Mizzou cup to prove it 😅😉.

From what I have been told by the Columbia poison control, a person with normal digestion eating a significant amount of E-Lax does not affect them. Don't ask me why I know this 🙄.

Maryland blue crabs.

Last summa we whar fishing up in Glawstah.😁 The home of the Wicked Tuna folks.

Getting?!? I am way ahead on the old train lately.

Sue bought a half bushel of crabs on Wednesday. We steamed them with JO seasoning (like this better than Old Bay). Had several that night. Picked the rest of the bodies but put the claws away in fridge. Sue made crab cakes Friday night. Was a great recipe with a minimum amount of breading. Today I finally picked the claws. We made crab Alfredo . All were delicious. No photos but still worth talking about😉. Still have about a pound of the leg back fin meat in the freezer.

From a scientific point of view this strategy is viable. I am just not a big fan of dumping in modified fish and hoping for the best. We'll see in a few years how this plays out in Colorado. https://www.9news.com/article/life/animals/colorado-cutthroat-trout-historic-effort-save/73-e72ffb25-8260-4ae7-8be6-53f0030a48e1

Interesting article. About birds but is common with fish as well and relevant to this thread https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/26/social-media-posts-endangered-species-capercaillie-birders-aoe

Wasn't sure if I should put this here or in the Watchya listening to thread. Thought it was pretty funny😉

I do too😉

Pretty cool darter. I hope that they are successful in this reintroduction. There are so many variables/obstacles that they need to overcome, e.g., habitat changes, prior diet changes, water quality, etc. I would love to see one in the wild. Maybe if they are successful and increase in numbers, they may become a target species. Fishing for vulnerable, threatened, or endangered species is a touchy subject. I think that you need look at the proposed root causes of the low or threatened abundance. A lot of darters are vunerable/threatened/endangered not because they are uncommon or not very abundant, but because they live within a small distribution footprint. That situation puts them at risk if there is an issue that effects their whole range. Whereas others are at very low numbers throught their range.