MGF

I guess any night works this time of year.

Fishing in the river where it's often very clear I start with about 15 ft of 12# fc on 20 or 30 # braid. My knots are small so there's no problem passing my thumb or guides. I often use mono when fishing a jig. When skipping under overhangs in the river or docks I like mono. The line takes a beating but I can afford to change it. LOL

I don't know what it is about that rig. I didn't use it much this past season but I did really well on it. I think the reason I didn't use it more was because I didn't really care for the way it looked in the water and kept thinking the catches were just dumb luck. This is another bait I want to experiment with more next season.

I haven't put one on a jig but using worms as jig trailers is something I'd like to experiment with this coming season.

I'm not clear on what you're doing with the worm...Is it just a piece of plastic over the hook point? Thanks in advance.

I dived all over the place from Florida to the great lakes and most fish react similar to the bass in the video I linked but, as a rule, not carp. That observation doesn't mean that nobody ever got close to a carp and it doesn't explain why the carp apparently react differently. It might be the bubbles. I never did much free diving.

It's funny how one can get stuck in habits. I fish a lot of tubes and a number of weightless plastics but I haven't often thought to fish a weightless tube. It's somwthing to spend a little time with come spring.

I still doubt that it would be legal but I don't know. Is my las post really purple? I don't know how that happened. LOL

As a long time scuba diver I don't know how "smart" carp are but a diver almost never gets close to them. It's kind of rare to even get close enough to see them. They hear/feel you coming and get gone. The one exception would be ponds or springs where they have divers and swimmers gawking at them all the time. By contrast it's no problem getting close to bass. I've had bass guarding fry get right up in my face and challenge me. I've had bass swim with me on a night dive and use my light to hunt. I've seen them caught during underwater fishing tournaments...that's where you tie a lure to a piece of line, hold it in your hand and swim up to a fish and dangle it in front of their nose. You think they're smart? Underwater fishing... https://www.wideopenspaces.com/underwater-fishing-bass-video/ Bass would be incredibly easy for an otter to catch. I think it would be illegal to stock carp in most public waters. I think it's even illegal in many places to turn them back after you catch them.

I don't have any science on it and I really don't expect any help from the state but our river is sort of like a bunch of small lakes...the riffle, hole, run deal and holes can be fairly far apart. When the otters move into an area the fish seem to disappear. I can't say whether the otters ate them, ran them out or if it's all pure coincidence. Granted things are always changing on the river and there are many variables.

Thanks but I think I have it taken care of. I don't know about other states but I was shocked to find that it's illegal here to evict bats during the time of year when they might have young...and I don't think you can toss them out in the winter either. I wonder how the state feel about charging them rent.

Me too. As soon as I think I now how to fish a ledge the fish head to a flat. As soon as I learn the hole in a section of river the fish school in the runs right in the middle of the sort of current they're supposed to get out of. For a long time I was an avid scuba diver with a preference for fresh water and it always seemed to me like the fish aren't reading the same stuff we are. LOL Deer are the same way. They seem to do what they want more often than they do what they are supposed to. I still refer to my electronics as a "depth finder". That's because I never had a hard time seeing fish on it but that doesn't mean that I can catch them. LOL I have spent a LOT of time unable to tear myself away from fish that I could see but couldn't catch.

But not all areas of Illinois are equal. Whitetail deer will be near cover. In some places there is little or no cover for 7 months of the year. You will not see many deer or any deer at all in a place like that. The hunters know it because we won't be hunting there. You can't even find a track and we don't need a banker to tell us that. LOL I live in corn country and just going to and from work and my other normal driving, I see hundreds of deer in a weeks time. Not just deer but in the typical week I'll see dozens or even hundreds of turkeys. But we still have quite a lot of woodlots or other year round cover. The crops add a rich food source to the woods which are really pretty calorie lean by comparison. So deer densities and deer size are greater than in some large tracts of forest. Yet there are areas of Il where I worked for years and NEVER saw a deer or a turkey. Do you know why? Because there aren't very many there. There could be some using a ditch someplace...but not many. The carrying capacity is very low because there isn't much food or cover for 7 months of the year. Crops alone aren't enough.

Well I haven't ever need any help keeping the coons or groundhogs out of my buildings...though the bats were a pain in the backside for a while. I don't think I disagree with you except that your statement about mammals and crop fields is a too general. There are plenty of deer (for example) but there are not lots of deer everyplace. You're right farming hasn't killed all the deer but it sure has moved them out of some areas.

On topic - I think otters can definitely effect fish populations and, further, some fisheries are probably very sensitive to those effects. I think (but can't prove) that my river is one such fishery.

Yes...sometimes the guys in the boat cast the bank while the guys on the bank try to cast to the middle of the lake. I remember a lake where we used to vacation. It was small enough to notice that the people staying at the resort on one side of the lake boated to the other side to fish in front of the resort on the other side of the lake...and the folks staying at that resort did the same.

My comment about not supporting a mouse was somewhat "tongue in cheek". Sure snow can cover tracks at times but if you have snow and very many critters traveling through that snow, you will see tracks. I'm not one of your customers and I'm no stranger to fields, woods and tracking. What about a bank? LOL A deer will eat like a king in a corn or bean field...it's when the crops are picked all the way to the ground that they need something else. When crops are combined with other cover like wood lots the deer grow many and big. The woodlots and fence rows are going away in many areas. The key term here once again is carrying capacity...deer/ unit area...yes? The carrying capacity can be greatly diminished by various types of development.

There are coyotes in Chicago and they try to eat my dad's dog in the western suburbs of Chicago. There are lots of bucks in Il but not everyplace in Illinois. If the only vegetation is seasonal corn the carrying capacity will be very low. Maybe I'm not being clear? I know where to look for tracks thanks. Again, there might be something living in a drainage ditch someplace. So? Maybe I'm not understanding your point. I don't have a pond. It's not legal for me to trap on private property along the river and I'm really not available to float the river to run a trap line on a daily basis. Last I checked a trapper is only allowed one otter/year and that just started in the last couple of years. Prior to that the otters were protected. But I have some conibears (at home and at work) and know where to get more if I need them. Thanks.

People with ponds were glad to be rid of them. As the number of otters grew here I didn't appreciate the apparent effects either.

The most desolate land I could show you is in parts of north central Illinois...say along rt 64 west of Chicago. There might be something living in a drainage ditch someplace but that ditch doesn't provide much habitat. I worked in that area for years and traveled those roads at all hours and seasons. I never saw anything other than a few birds. My wife and I even walked the roadside in good snow just to see...nothing. I haven't seen anything in Indiana that quit compares. Where I live it isn't that bad yet but it's going that direction. The point is that if you turn an otter lose there he's going to aggravate somebody. LOL

White men dug ponds and killed the otters to prevent them from eating their fish. At that point there were no otters. Then the state made it illegal to kill otters and put them back in the ponds. LOL You mention the coyote expansion. As I recall that started when bounties ended. I remember when there were full time professional coyote hunters. Now we have coyotes killing pets in suburban neighborhoods. A few years ago I got permission to deer hunt some private property...which is really rare around here. The property owner actually made it a condition that I make an honest effort to kill any coyote that I saw. He's a sheep farmer.

Some critters do well in a more urban setting and some don't. Urbanization isn't what's happening here though. We grow corn. Past generations of farmers left lots of woods standing. Newer farmers cut everything down to make room for corn. Once you have nothing but crop fields it gets pretty "sterile". I could guide you through many miles of our Midwest farmland where almost nothing lives. Once the crops are harvested you are left with a baron wasteland without enough cover to support even a mouse. You could walk for miles in a fresh snow without ever cutting a track. Nobody who lives there are calling for your services. It seems like I see another woodlot coming down about every week. Most of the ponds here are stock ponds...or started that way. Some of them end up with good populations of fish and usually account for a lot of record fish. Personally I've never had access to any so it's not so much skin off my nose but otters will wipe them out. I'm not sure what provisions our state makes for relocating otters but I can't imagine that folks here would pay you when they have a rifle handy.

I'm not comparing anything in Indiana to anything in Florida. I understand the concept of carrying capacity. This is farm country and nothing like south Florida. The waters are limited and highly pressured on multiple fronts. Likewise the fish populations are limited and pressured. Good otter habitat is also very limited and on the decline. I'm sure the carrying capacity is orders of magnitude less than the everglades. The everglades has a lot of things that northern Indiana doesn't. If it were within my power I would gladly gift to you every single one of our otters.

Our state recently opened a trapping season on them. Help yourself...of course you have to purchase a license and get landowner permission. I've been searching these water for a 10 pounder for more than 50 years and I haven't found one yet. I think the otters ate them all. LOL

I didn't mean to suggest that the otters will clean out the entire river. The river is too vast for the number of otters. The otters have though cleaned out many ponds. A small number of otters can clean out an entire pond in a short time. There's nothing natural going on here. The ponds aren't natural, the fish populations in them aren't natural and the presence of the otters are NOT natural. Every bit of this is the work of people. The otters and most of their natural habitat were long gone in this area. A small group of people in state government had money from collecting lots of taxes and selling many many fishing licenses thought... "Oh wouldn't it be wonderful to see some little otters running around?". And they made it so. And now some ponds are without fish. Once the otters empty a pond, you won't see them there anymore.