A New Species Caught!

We'll get back to this guy in a minute....

It was a warm early summer day.  Fathers and sons fishing.  Specifically, bank fishing for odd fish.  I wore my Wisconsin's Least Glamorous Fish T shirt for the occasion, and sure enough the first one up was a Freshwater Drum, featured on same.

I'd only every caught one of these before.  I quadrupled my tally in a couple of hours.  In fact that was all we were catching until we moved to another spot.  Then a Golden Redhorse showed up.  I asked this youngster to try and imitate the dopy horse like face of the fish.  He's just too darn cute to pull it off.

My goal for the day was to catch a Mooneye.  It's an odd one, a fish that mostly lives in the top few inches of water.  They spend all day making little ripples on the surface to taunt me.  Eventually I did reel one in.  Here's my attempt at a Mooneye Face.  I know, not much different from my usual look.

A very lazy day.  Kids ran around and looked at rocks, dug holes in the sand, basically were just kids being kids.  Dads watched the bank poles.  The can by the way contained soda.  The area does seem popular with folks who "party fish" in the night time hours, if old campfires and the occasional beer can can be taken in evidence.

I believe my life time list of freshwater species stands at 41.  And I have some extra time and nightcrawlers this week, so might go out in search of another particularly tough one.....the Northern Hogsucker!

Mostly for my own records, here's my freshwater fish list.  Yes, the salmon can be fresh or salt water.  

Northern Pike, Musky, Walleye, Sauger, Large and Smallmouth bass, Black crappie, Bluegill, Pumpkinseed, Green Sunfish, White Sucker, Common Carp, Black and Yellow Bullheads, Golden, Shorthead and Silver Redhorse.  Pink, Sockeye, King and Silver Salmon.  Rock Bass, Yellow Perch, Smallmouth Buffalo, Lake Sturgeon, Channel Catfish, Creek Chub, Horney Head Chub, Common Shiner, Freshwater Drum, Round Goby.  Brook, Rainbow and Brown Trout.  Dolly Varden, Mooneye, Log Perch.  Dogfish (aka Bowfin), Lake Trout, Short Nosed Gar, Silver Carp,   (41)  I've also caught a few minnows and some sort of sculpin that I don't have enough evidence to identify.

My salt water list is shorter, and obviously harder to add onto.  I think its around 9.