Fishing Goal For 2014

[Al Agnew]

Ham, 52 species is doable without leaving the Ozarks. In fact, you could get 50 species at least, without leaving the upper White River system where you live:

paddlefish

longnose gar

skipjack

gizzard shad

threadfin shad

mooneye

rainbow trout

brown trout

cutthroat trout

brook trout

grass pickerel

common carp

goldfish

grass carp

creek chub

hornyhead chub

duskystripe shiner

striped shiner

central stoneroller

largescale stoneroller

bigmouth buffalo

black buffalo

smallmouth buffalo

quillback carpsucker

white sucker

northern hogsucker

black redhorse

golden redhorse

shorthead redhorse

silver redhorse

river redhorse

creek chubsucker

black bullhead

yellow bullhead

channel catfish

blue catfish

flathead catfish

white bass

striped bass

smallmouth bass

spotted bass

largemouth bass

green sunfish

warmouth

spotted sunfish

redear sunfish

longear sunfish

bluegill

ozark bass (rock bass)

white crappie

black crappie

walleye

yellow perch

drum

Those could all be caught in the White River system.

Add these, and stay in the Ozarks:

american eel

chain pickerel

muskellunge

golden shiner

redspot chub

bleeding shiner

shadow bass

rock bass

sauger

And that doesn't include a bunch of the minnow species, which you could easily catch with a very small hook and a bit of worm, if you got desperate to round out your 52 species, along with a couple species of darters that are big enough to eat a worm.

I'd say you could easily catch about 30 species on artificial lures, you could luck into another ten species or so with lures, the rest you'd have to fish some kind of live bait or by snagging.

[bfishn]

Gonna have to make a really tiny hook look like a bit of algae stuck to a rock for the stonerollers and other grazers. Good luck with that.

[Mitch f]

I fish for two species. Well 5 species if you count large mouth, small mouth, spotted, and mean mouth as seperate species. My goals are more limited because of that.

I want to master jig fishing with the jika rig for both species.

I want to find and understand a new pattern for each species to add to my repetoir. (No, not A Rig)

I want to become better at reading pattern changes - maybe even anticipating them.

Interesting, keep me posted on the jika rig, been toying with that myself....also infatuated with the Neko rig.

[Ham]

I'm not against live bait / natural.bait fishing. I will also fish tiny flies on a creek with a 3 wt and a 4 wt to see what I can catch. I'm caught almost everything I'm hoping to catch at one time or another. The tough part is catching them all again this year.

I think I caught 27 species in 2013. Most years I'll stumble across at least 20 species with my normal fishing.

[fishinwrench]

Is the plan to just chalk up incidental catches, or will there be a specific general goal at the beginning of each day out?

For instance: Will you wake up one day and think...Today I'm going to target the various chubs and shiners?

[Ham]

Hey Wrench,

I'm thinking I'll have to make specific trips trying to catch certain fish. I'll get 15 species or so with just normal fishing, but I'm going to have to make road trips for fish that at the very least aren't really common here.

I'll definitely make some creek trips with flyrod only using tiny midges and stuff swung thru looking for stuff that won't strike smallie stuff.

Some guys talk about catching log perch on inline spinners so I might swing the mallest inline spinners I own on a 5 weight with sink tip line

[fishinwrench]

Pretty cool endeavor, and it has given me an idea...

I'd like to round up, photograph, and positively identify every critter than swims/crawls/or slithers here in my home creek. There are some minnows, bugs, and amphibians in there that I'm not 100% sure exactly what they are.

[Ham]

I'm going to try to make the time to put on the diving mask and take a look around under water when I'm on my creek trips in 2014.

I'm going to keep up with the numbers I catch, but I'm not going to fret over it near so much. Less worrying about numbers should = more time to be goofy.

[rainbow]

52 species is a heck of a goal. I hope you make it. A few years back I had a goal of trout fishing the white, tarpon fishing in Florida and blue water fishing for Marlin in Hawaii in the same month. It actually took 5 weeks but I made it and caught trout, a 150 and 90 lb tarpon, a marlin that i did not land, a large spearfish, mahi mahi and ono and a nice ahi tuna. I doubt if I'll ever accomplish a goal like that again but it was fun.

[Ham]

You the Man rainbow! I'd dearly love to catch a Tarpon , Mahi Mahi, and Ahi tuna. I'm not sure why Marlin and fish of that ilk don't appeal to me, but I think I'd have more fun fishing for the bait for the marlin fishermen. I've never heard of an ono, but I''ll look into them.