The New Bait is OK

Last week I posted an item about the  availability of live bait. No golden shiners are available for some reason that I have not been able to determine. The new bait being sold has been named a "black and white" for some reason since it has no black or white color. The new bait shown below looks more like a carp to me but it has some different characteristics than a carp.

The mouth is more frontal than a carp and to me it has a higher frequency wiggle than a cars, although I haven't seen too many carp this small size swim. I have also had some success hooking the fish behind the dorsal fin and letting it wiggle wildly in the water. When hooking this fish through the front of the mouth it is necessary to make sure than the hook goes through the lower lip and the upper lip very close to the front of the lip. If the hook penetrates too far back in the head, there will not be enough of the hook showing to hook the predator fish and you will get a lot of bites that drop off when being retrieved. If hooked correctly these fish live longer than the shiners did. I have trolled this fish for two hours and it was still very active on the line.

One concern that I have is that continued use of this bait will eventually create a new species in our lake. To prevent this make sure that you don't dump your excess bait into the lake at the end of your fishing. I have contacted the Wildlife people to explore this possibility. I have caught all species of fish with this bait except crappie. I expect that they are too big for the crappie to digest.