fish ID for fun

[trythisonemv]

Looks like a snake head. Did it have the big dot by the rear fin like a bowfin from up north?

[Brian Jones]

I've showed the pic to several people for fun today and a lot have mis-identified the fish as a snakehead.  It was a bowfin/grinnel and I figured that most on here would ID it correctly right away. The nasty sucker was on a bank that we had caught a whole bunch of largemouths off of throughout the day.   I pitched a paca craw into a log and for a moment thought that I had finally hooked a stud largemouth.  As it got nearer to the boat, I saw a brown flash and knew it was a rough fish of some kind as we were WAY too far downstream for it to be a smallmouth.  First one I have ever caught, though they are pretty common through this section of creek/ditch/canal.  

[Ham]

I was fishing at Grand Bayou near Coushatta, La. Someone had tossed a Choupique (Bowfin) up on the bank to rot. It had dried into an hard, stinky U. I kicked it into the water (kind of hurt my foot a little) because I'd rather the crawfish ate it than flies. To my utter amazement in the time it took for me to put my boat on the trailer and pull out of the way, that sucker had re-hydrated. I was watched him flip and flop at the water's surface a time or two and then gather himself up and swim away. I would have struggled to believe it had I not seen it myself.

[Ham]

1 hour ago, dtrs5kprs said:

 I've seen guys beat them with paddles to make them unclamp from a spinnerbait or buzzbait. 

Good way to break a paddle.

[dtrs5kprs]

26 minutes ago, Ham said:

Good way to break a paddle.

Indeed. God's nastiest creatures seem to be the most durable. Bowfin, roaches, and Senators.

[Al Agnew]

7 hours ago, Ham said:

Did someone say Road Trip?

Haven't fished Horseshoe in many years...I think the 1993 flood on the Mississippi really messed it up and I don't know if it ever recovered.  It sure was fun fishing back in those days.  Those swamp bass were almost black, and they were mean when they busted through the duckweed.

[Ham]

1 hour ago, Al Agnew said:

Haven't fished Horseshoe in many years...I think the 1993 flood on the Mississippi really messed it up and I don't know if it ever recovered.  It sure was fun fishing back in those days.  Those swamp bass were almost black, and they were mean when they busted through the duckweed.

I grew up fishing the cypress swamps of central and southern Louisiana. Good times. 

 

[Johnsfolly]

I haven't caught a bowfin since I moved from Florida. Certainly not a fish that you want to lip with your thumb.

[goosetalk]

19 hours ago, Brian Jones said:

I  As it got nearer to the boat, I saw a brown flash and knew it was a rough fish of some kind as we were WAY too far downstream for it to be a smallmouth.  F

Although not common, I usually catch a few smallmouth while targeting whites in the Mississippi River and its tributaries north of St. Louis.

[DADAKOTA]

IS that a burbot aka eelpout?  Dad grew up in Wisconsin and called them lawyers.  The resemblance is uncanny.