Search Results for: gar

Flying Gar Feeding Frenzy

500 miles. 24 hours. Infinite fish. On a Mission On the last day of the 2017 NANFA convention in Missouri, I drove several hours to fish some waters in the southeast corner of the state, led by Tyler Goodale, one of the fishiest people in MO. In the other car were a couple other NANFA members on a mission to capture (with dipnet and seine) some darter and sunfish species. My mission was to cast… Continue reading

Illinois Native Gar in the Legislature

Final update, June 2016 The resolution passed the House and Senate unanimously and the DNR has resumed (or will soon resume) the stocking of Alligator Gar in Illinois. Fingers crossed that there will be research into whether limits on gar killing are appropriate in some locations. Update, April 19 The Ag & Conservation Committee has adopted the resolution with a 13-0 vote. Thank you to everyone who registered support for this legislation. All our names… Continue reading

Gar Peril! Iowa, 1912

A man with a fish stuck in his eye.

Browsing old newspapers for interesting fish stories, I uncovered a very brief item of massive importance and interest. That this has remained hidden so long may be evidence of a cover-up (though there is, as yet, no way to know how high this goes). There are, in this single sentence, more stories than young Edward himself might have wanted us to find. (See note below about this image of the paper.) If you have ever… Continue reading

Shortnose Gar Bonanza! (includes underwater video)

  The Spot There’s this spot. It’s on a river. Tough to get to: a long hike in wet grass, a rocky downhill, slipping in mud and stumbling and rolling on loose stones. Poison ivy everywhere. Trail barely visible unless you know where to look. Then you get to the river, where you slip and trip some more, and lots more poison ivy. Most of that is not exaggerated much. You won’t like it, even… Continue reading

Garz! (In hoc signo…)

A neon sign that says "GARZ."

Passed this sign the other day on the way to a river with a good population of Shortnose Gar (I still can’t get used to the idea that it’s now the accepted practice to capitalize common names, but I’m trying). The plan was to catch some. The sign seemed to promise me success. (In hoc signo vinces, right?) The obvious promise was broken.   As long as I’m posting signs of the coming of The… Continue reading

Gar Accomplished: all 5 US species

Contact with gar fires me up in a way no other group of fish does, and I know I’m not alone in appreciating these fish. The reaction they ignite in me is located somewhere deeper than the feelings touched off by more recently arrived fishes like trout, bass, or even suckers. It’s been said before by others who have found themselves addicted to these fish: they’re dinosaurs, dragons, pure predators, living fossils. For me it… Continue reading

Illinois Gar Summit I, Feb. 2014

Illinois Gar Summit I, 2014: Bill Meyer, Olaf Nelson. Solomon David and a cenury-old (plus) Alligator Gar in the deepest recesses of the Field Museum in Chicago.

After months of hopeful but vague discussion about getting together to talk gar (and other cool fish), three of the most gar obsessed citizens of Illinois finally managed to meet at the end of February. Solomon David, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Shedd Aquarium (and see primitivefishes.com), hosted Bill Meyer (founder of garfishing.com and the Gar Angler’s Sporting Society [GASS]) and me for a full day of fish nerding. We enjoyed a tour behind the… Continue reading

J. K. Rowling: Closet Roughfisher? Secret Gar Message Hidden in Harry Potter

J. K. Rowling loves gar. Big gar. She probably thought no one would notice this subliminal plug for the dark art of fishing for big gar, but roughfishers are good at noticing things where others see nothing. (From Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone.) Make the gar nice and long, indeed.   Continue reading

Another Gar and Roughfish podcast to download (not me this time!)

Want to hear what it means to talk without ambiguity about something you really love? Doing his part in our ongoing effort to storm the halls of fishing power and supplant the trout and bass overlords, Garman appeared recently on the same public radio outdoors show I was on a couple weeks ago. He is much more entertaining than I was. I promise. Download it here: Thanks again to Dale Bowman for the coverage and… Continue reading

Gar and suckers (and me) on the radio (and iTunes) today

As if the newspaper article about my deviant fishing tastes and the alligator gar I caught wasn’t enough, today a radio show is being broadcast on the same subjects. I was actually allowed to sit in a recording studio and talk for half an hour about my thoughts on fish, fishing, and more. After a week of imagining all the stupid things I might have said and strange sounds I might have made, I’m relieved… Continue reading

Gator Gar in the Newspaper!

If you have access a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times from Wednesday, Sep. 25, 2013, ignore the front page (mass shooting, corruption trial, food festival) and skip immediately to page 65. (If you happen to be my mom, I’ll send you a copy.) The headline: “Gator (gar) in the house.” Try not to look at the small mugshot. Focus on the words and the bigger photo. It’s also online: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/outdoors/22773269-452/brookfield-man-lands-first-alligator-gar-in-illinois-since-1966.html Who would have guessed that… Continue reading

Gar fans, take a look at these sites

Two gar- and bowfin-related sites I found a few days ago are worth looking at if you’ve caught that particular sickness. Both are run by Solomon David, currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Daniel P. Haerther Center for Conservation & Research at the John G. Shedd Aquarium and jointly at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology. (I took that text straight from the About page of one of the sites.) Tropical gar at… Continue reading

Catching gator gar, making history

In 1966, at the very southern tip of Illinois, a 7 foot, 150 pound alligator gar was caught on hook and line. There are no records of any being caught (by any method) in the state after that. 1966. Three  years before I was born. No one had been to  the moon yet. Computers that couldn’t even send offers of cheap Canadian pharmaceuticals or display low-resolution pornography were the size of Econoline vans and required… Continue reading

New World Record Buffalo (and maybe a World Record Gar) in Texas

Lots of amazing fish being caught in TX recently. David G. and his brother got into some monster fish, including big alligator gar, huge smallmouth buffalo and what might have been a world record longnose gar at 61 inches and an estimated weight (based on length and girth) of 49.6 pounds. The world record, which some say is probably a hybrid longnose/alligator, is 50 pounds and change. The brothers G didn’t have a scale, so… Continue reading

Cowardly pike, sportless walleye, evil gar, holy trout & virtuous whitefish

Looking for Insults I tend to get pretty angry when I find anti-sucker (and other roughfish) sentiment on the web or in current publications. By now, shouldn’t everyone know better? In older sources, however, I make a point of looking for insults, dismissals, diatribes and condemnations of the fish I like. It’s fun to read. While I wouldn’t expect old books aimed at a popular audience (how-to-fish manuals, fishing guidebooks, memoirs of fishermen) to cover… Continue reading

Iris Catches the Unicorn

As parents, we want our kids to be better than we are and to do better than we have done. The other day I got a little taste of this idea in action. My daughters have fished as long as they’ve been able to hold a fishing pole. Both of them love it. But Iris, age 9, has developed a fishing addiction that rivals my own. All winter we talked about the fishing we’d do… Continue reading

Halloween Fish Geekery

A few years ago, I created (in photoshop, not pumpkin flesh) a Norther Hog Sucker jack-o-lantern. I’ve felt like a bad person ever since, knowing that a real fish geek would have carved a real fish pumpkin. No longer! This year I bought a pumpkin with the right shape, I kept it inside so squirrels wouldn’t damage it, and I studied gar anatomy. Last night, I hooked up the electrodes to the lightning rods atop… Continue reading

State Record Shorthead Redhorse Caviar

I have asked myself many times what I would do if I happened to catch a record-sized fish. I suspect most of us who fish obsessively have thought about this. There are really only two choices. You either kill it, take it to a certified scale, fill out paperwork and get the record, or you photograph the hell out of it, measure it every way you can think of, then release it and bask in… Continue reading

Black Horse, Blue Sucker

 The following was first published, in an abridged form, in American Currents, (http://www.nanfa.org/ac.shtml and see my post about AC and NANFA here) Vol. 40, no. 1 (January, 2015). This online version will evolve as I find new information, new images, and additional sources. Fishing in the Public Domain Unlike features such as scale or ray counts, the names of fishes—scientific and common—are susceptible to the same forces as any human creation. What initially seem like… Continue reading

Modoc Sucker Delisting: Public Comment Period Extended

Anyone with scientific or other evidence regarding the health of the Modoc Sucker as a species has a very brief window during which additional comments may be submitted regarding the FWS proposal to remove the species from the Federal List of Threatened and Endangered Wildlife. De-listing was proposed a year ago (February, 2014). See my post about it here. The proposal states: We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), propose to remove the Modoc… Continue reading

Mapping the Paddlefish (because someone had to do it) [updated Sep. 2016]

I needed a map showing the range of the Paddlefish (Polyodon spathula, also known as spoonbill catfish, among other things), one of North America’s most striking animals. Despite a lot of searching (online and in books), however, I couldn’t find any map that was both up-to-date and of sufficient quality. I also couldn’t find any single listing of the species’ current status in all states where it is found, nor the regulations governing if/how it… Continue reading

Bowfin for June Species Contest

I got to draw the button (and t-shirt) again this year for the roughfish.com June species contest. Last year I did a pumpkinseed. This year I made a bowfin. (Last weekend I was fishing with Garman and asked what kind of fish he thought I should draw. He said a bowfin would be cool. I ran with it.) To enter the contest, get an account at roughfish.com, buy the button and/or t-shirt, wait til 12:01AM on… Continue reading

A blue sucker in the hand is worth 100 in books

I have held blue suckers. A bunch of them.   (There are more photos below. Read on or scroll down.) It turns out that if you start a site devoted to catostomids, and you’re very polite to the right people, you might find yourself spending a sunny May day on board a boat in the Wisconsin River with a net in your hands and hundreds of suckers (of many species) and sturgeon (of two species)… Continue reading

Juvenile quillback carpsuckers on hook and line

Multi-species angler Ben Cantrell managed to catch a couple of juvenile quillbacks (Carpiodes cyprinus) recently (late March, 2013), and since I have never seen any this young—in person or in photos this clear—I asked if he would let me post them here. (Edit: Ben has since written up this story on his own blog, along with other fishing successes. Check it out for some great fish and photos: http://bencantrellfish.blogspot.com/) These were caught in an area… Continue reading

Two brothers, two days, two Illinois state record redhorses

This story is a few years old (the following is based on Dale Bowman’s report in the Chicago Sun-Times on May 14, 2008, linked below), but it’s a beauty: Brothers Andrew and John Chione were fishing the Fox River west of Chicago in 2008 for carp, catfish and anything else that would bite. On April 24th,13-year-old John caught a 25.5 inch, 6.71 pound silver redhorse, got it weighed on a certified scale and had the… Continue reading

Goldfish under ice

The winter tends to be a time of increased artistic output for me since I can’t fish or garden when water and/or soil and/or air are frozen. This year the area of creativity that’s getting the most sustained workout is photography. Though I am not particularly fond of ice fishing, I do like ice itself quite a bit. These fish (I’m calling them goldfish, though some may actually be koi (i.e., common carp) were active… Continue reading

Redhorses: Shorthead, Golden, and Silver, and other fish from 2012 so far (tons of photos)

Some of the fish I’ve caught in 2012. According to my records, I’ve hooked and landed almost 30 species this year, 9 of which are new additions to my lifelist (sauger, longnose gar, mooneye, silver carp, silver redhorse, yellow bullhead, bowfin, lake trout and warmouth). I also hooked and lost a shovelnose sturgeon that still haunts me (it would have been lifer #10). During the roughfish.com June species contest I caught 27 species (more than… Continue reading

Flannelmouth sucker, on a fly, in Colorado, in February

Angler with flannelmouth sucker on Roaring Fork River, Colorado

I spend a fair amount of time reading about fishing—in books and online—and, as I’ve noted elsewhere on this site, I’m weary of the preponderance of trout writing and trout photos. As I’ve also said, I am a big fan of trout and trout fishing. I just don’t like to see fishing limited to a few types of fish. I’ve wondered if the many bloggers and authors posting amazing trout photos have shots of other… Continue reading

Endangered & Threatened Fish Species

Having found no single listing of all endangered, threatened or otherwise listed species of fish in the US, I searched each state’s listings and compiled the results here. All I really wanted were redhorse and other suckers, but since I couldn’t find a comprehensive list anywhere, I decided to look for all 50 states’ endangered and threatened fish species. I originally left out most minnows and micros except for some chubs that I knew (or… Continue reading

About

Moxostoma.com is the effort of a fish-loving guy in Illinois, not the redhorse arm of a fishing conglomerate or academic institution. My professional calling is book design, which I do through my company, Chinook Design, Inc. My main calling, however, is fishing. To me, “fishing” includes reading and writing about fish, making fish-related art, and actually casting an actual line in an attempt to catch actual fish. I have work and kids, so it’s sometimes… Continue reading