redhorse suckers?s

can someone tell me the best way to catcha a large amount of redhorse suckers? i hear the coosa creeks have them and i know the dam at neely henry can get quite a few in the winter.

can i trap them

Never caught one any other way than shooting them with a bowfishing bow

No personal experience, but I've heard people say they take a cast net to the Neely dam and drop it straight down the walls.

We used to catch a lot of them in the Cahaba in the 60s. Would catch them in wire baskets for catfish, and also caught them on a hook using willow grubs. I have caught them in Weogufka creek when fishing for catfish.

I have heard that people catch both whitehorse and redhorse in Elkatchee creek in the spring when they come out of Lake Martin to spawn, but not sure how they do it; they are netting them somehow. A redhorse has a sweet flavor that is as good as any fish you can eat, but you gotta deal with those Y bones somehow.

Great big bass bait!!!

The first rule of catching rhs is to not talk about catching rhs.....

I caught one on a beechnut one time

My dad use to tell me about shooting rh in elkatchee with 22s when they were younger.

You gig them. Wade shallow creeks at night in the spring when they spawn. Its called sucker gigging. Been going on around here for a long long time. It used to be really common. The old folks would power boil them and can the meat. Made patties out of it later and fried them like salmon patties. When you power boil them it softens the bones. They are really bony, so ive been told.

I know at one point they ran up the creek through my property.There is a trough carved in the creek bottom they supposedly used to put some sort of trap in. It was a lot deeper back in the day.When I was a kid we actually caught panfish in it, but it is too shallow now and sometimes dries up.

We used to put nets out across the creek at night. Creek fed directly off the Chattahoochee. Best time of the year was right after deer season and thru the Spring. Gash those things up, fry em good and crispy and it's some FINE eating!

They're bottom feeders, but they like clean, fairly clear water. Submerge a croaker sack of chicken feed in a hole that borders the current and dead water, then throw a few pounds of loose chicken feed around it. Fish just off the bottom, an inch or two, with red worms. My brother and I catch tons of them every year like that. Old timers say cut them this way and cook them that way, but they have a ton of bones and just aren't worth the extra trouble, to me. We use them for crawfish bait.

Interesting way to bait them! The easiest way to deal with the bones is to just fillet them like you would a bass and then cook them in the pressure cooker a few minutes. You could can them, but that really is a lot of trouble. But once you cook them in the pressure cooker, you can freeze them in pint bags and then use them exactly like you would canned tuna or salmon. I've never given any to anyone who didn't agree that it was much better than tuna or salmon.

And people have the to talk about how cajuns eat anything. What trash fish don't you guys eat?

Used to gig them on the Gasconade River during winter when I lived in Missouri

Too many better fish for a lot less trouble. They are fun to catch, though, easy to find/catch, and a good fight! 25 or so 1.5 pounders in the bucket, and we're set to bait the crawfish traps for a couple days!

Folks around here gig them in the spring. I have eat them before, they were canned and we cooked them like salmon patties. They were good.

I need them for striped bass bait. For that matter, I need gizzard shad, anything that is alive that I can throw in my bait tank.

careful on the shad muzzie. make sure they come from the water you are fishing. We only use the rhs in the spring, it's the only time we can catch them in the cast net at the dam.

I have been able to catch a few with my cast net if I am fortunate enough to see them schooling early morning but have had pretty good luck turning on the big green light and just throwing at it when the bait fish arrive. Drop them in basket on dock and dump them in bait tank when I head out in the morning.