Newbie To Wading

[eric1978]

There was a guy form the Missouri fur trappers assoc of Missouri who spoke at an MSA meeting one night. He said those cute little otters were the most ferocious trapped animals in Missouri, even more so than a trapped Bobcat. He mentioned a guy who looking for his trap in knee deep water when the trapped otter lunged at him and almost ripped his chest waders off before he could get away. He commented the otters were only muscles and teeth!

IMO, thats a human intervention gone bad. The MDC released the cute little otters in MO, thinking they would only have a pup or two. Instead they spread out like a wagon wheel and multiplied like crazy.Sorry, didn't mean to hijack this thread!

Yeah, the otter idea hasn't worked out so great I guess. But they are native, and wanting them eliminated so we can catch more fish is pretty selfish. It was a bonehead move to reintroduce them since there are no natural predators to control them.

But the otter thing kinda reminds me of this Daily Show segment from this week...

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-august-2-2011/fowl-wind

[Mitch f]

I don't think anyone reasonable is going to take you task for that. If you are actually going through the effort to fillet the fish, and throwing out the ones that aren't edible, fine. The law says that you must eat all edible portions of fish or game. If it's 90% worms like some spotted bass are, then it ain't edible, at least not under most peoples' definitions.

But if you are just throwing them on the bank that is wanton waste of game, certainly illegal, completely unethical, and it goes against every sporting value that most of us believe to be important.

I won't get into the otter thing past this post, but they are a native species and belong here, period. Even if they screw up your smallmouth fishing.

I'm not as strong on the completely unethical part as you are, If we were talkng about chinese big head carp would you feel the same way? the coons, possums, and turtles gotta eat too!

[Guest]

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[Chief Grey Bear]

Love me some Spot's

I toss everyone of them back.

[ozark trout fisher]

Love me some Spot's

I toss everyone of them back.

I love native spotted bass too!

[RogerH]

Re: Otters and their presence in our streams and ecosystems where they were indigneous

What are you going to do about these badboys?

C'mon, folks, this is their world as well as ours.

Just saying!

[Buzz]

Love me some Spot's

I toss everyone of them back.

Here's another.

[Tim Smith]

Here's another.

According to Forbes, spotted bass were in the Champaign area before smallmouth were. LOVE catching big native spots. Super aggressive (they'll throw a hook and rush straight back in to take the lure again) and well into the mid to upper teens on the Illinois streams where I fish them, native spots are a blast.

Range expansions of spot dinks...not so much.

Also love the support on the thread for native predators. Warms the heart.

[Mitch f]

For the record, I've never actually killed an otter. I've carried a .22 cal rifle 3-5 times with me with the intention of killing an otter though. This was back in the "Otter Hysteria" days of the late 1990's. Back then the otters were much more plentiful than the numbers we hear about today. There was a lot of bad press coming from fishing groups back then and I admit that I was caught up in it. We heard of ponds along the river getting completely cleaned out of catfish. We heard of trophy smallmouth being killed by gangs of otters at play. It may or may not have been true.

In the last 3 years River otter pelts were going for $100 a piece. The trappers made a ton of cash and helped the fisherman bring the otters down to IMO more reasonable levels. The otter thing doesn't seem to be an issue anymore.

[Wayne SW/MO]

[i've carried a .22 cal rifle 3-5 times with me with the intention of killing an otter though./quote]

So you run up the river in a jet creating an unnatural current against the rootwads to kill a native animal you thing harms the environment. Interesting.