Another Great Trip

[jdmidwest]

10 hours ago, Mitch f said:

I’ve always heard you find them on fish in places where large groups of fish congregate…makes sense. Anyway I seem to always catch them on fish in a wintering hole. 

I have seen bass flick and flop till they get a lure out of their mouth.  Waited around for a few to pop back up and retrieve them.  I can only imagine the aggravation they have with one of those suckers sticking on their side.  Razor sharp teeth, held that one on 11pt in forceps looking it over closely.  Then let it bake on the boat deck for a while before I released it back to the wild.

[Al Agnew]

The chestnut lamprey, the only parasitic lamprey in Ozark streams, is a native fish that needs reasonably clean water to live.  We catch a lot of bass on the Meramec with lampreys in the winter, when the bass are more congregated and also probably slower and easier for the lampreys to attach themselves to.  I've only caught a handful of bass with lampreys attached during warmer weather periods.  However, their life cycle would indicate that they also parasitize fish during the summer...lampreys start out as larvae that are a bit like aquatic earthworms, living in quiet backwaters buried in the muck on the stream bottom and feeding on organic matter.  They live this way for several years, before in late fall transforming into the adult form with a rasping, sucking mouth.  But they don't start attaching themselves to fish until the next spring.  They feed on fish all that next summer, fall, and winter, but are not yet sexually mature.  By sometime in the year afterward, they get sexually mature, while continuing to feed all through the next winter.  Then the spring after that they migrate into smaller tributaries to spawn, and then die.

By the way, the lamprey stays attached to the fish for several days before dropping off, and later finding another fish to feed upon.  They don't kill the fish, but they leave sores that can get infected.

[fishinwrench]

49 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

The chestnut lamprey,

Better known as a wacky rigged Senko.....

[Al Agnew]

44 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

Better known as a wacky rigged Senko.....

Gotta wonder if more lampreys feed on bass than bass that feed upon lampreys!

[fishinwrench]

12 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

Gotta wonder if more lampreys feed on bass than bass that feed upon lampreys!

😅 As a lamprey, it would be pretty ballsy to swim up to a bass and try to latch on !

[jdmidwest]

If they can chew thru a basses scales,  imagine what it can do from the inside.........

They may just want to get slurped up for fun.