New Fish

8inch large mouth in a 20, kinda small tank for him isn't it?

 

small northern pike snakes are beautiful.

 

Is it wrong that i like to keep fish alive in my tank but yet like to catch fish to eat as well? haha my unlce raised a bass for about 2 years i think a long time ago, go to big for the tank and couldn't afford a bigger one so it went in a pond. i tried to when i was a kid with some crappie and blue gill and bass i sained out of a lake, but i had no clue what i was doing, they just looked neat.

 

Isn't it against regulations to keep any bass under 12 or 15 inches?

 

They are incredibly ravenous eaters, you better catch alot. Minnows, crawfish, crawlers, tadpoles.

If it is 8 inches that means it is only about 18 months old.

 

I used to raise Northern Pike and Tiger Muskie. When I was in high school I donated a 14" Pike and a 10" Tiger to the local children's museum. They had a couple thousand gallon pond display tank and they grew to 28" before the guy who maintained the tank left the water change pump on and filled the tank with fresh, untreated water, and everything died /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/tongue.gif

I used to buy my fish from a local pet store, but in college, when I was at school at Bradley in Peoria, IL, I got a bunch of fish from the IL DNR. Their fish hatchery was 15 miles away and they gave the fry away to me for free. I guess it's not too much for them to give me the fish when they have a 50 FT concrete holding tank filled with a million or so of them!

 

Ya those hatcheries are quite the site to see.

I wanted to go to work for the DNR when I was young until I learned you would lead a life of poverty.

 

There is a nice hatchery along a scenic highway along the mississippi... I think in Wisconsin. They had trout outdoors and you could watch bald eagles swoop in and grab them. They called the loss negligable. Indoors they had huge holding tanks full of young sturgeon... about 6 inches long. The DNR guy reached in and grabbed one to show us one of these up close.

 

i just want to catch sum fish this summer, i had no luck at all last year. There is a hatchery down by where i live near lake rathbun. i rememer goin there as a kid, atleast i think it was a hatchery. i went to to a trout farm as a kid to and got to fish it, but didn't catch anything. I like the freshwater exibit at the state fair, i just hope they dont keep those fish in those size tanks all year, some can barely turn around. It'd be nice to see GIRS setup a display type thing at the fair /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/wink.gif maybe even a booth in the varied industry building /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/wink.gif its airconditioned atleast

 

There's a hatchery just north of Muscatine about 5 miles or so on Hwy 22. It's not huge or anything, but they have about 6 big ponds.

 

at the moment i have around 20 baby blue gill and crappies, a couple four inch bass, i think theirs one left, they eat everything, they range from 1 inch to 4 inches. i think the best part is that they are aggressive enough to survive my 75 gar tank, anything not to fast is engulf by my almost two foot marble gar. then the 8 inch shovel nose cleans up the survivors.

 

The hatchery in Topeka, IL stocks Lake Michigan, if that gives you any idea on how big it is /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/tongue.gif It's spectacular there. They hatch every native fish you can think of. It's a really impressive operation. I think the coolest part is that the staff actually go fishing once a year to catch their breeding stocks. That sounds like a great job. Get paid to make and catch fish

 

The hatchery at Fairport (north of Muscatine) has 18 ponds - some are below the tracks and difficult to see from the road. If memory serves, all of the bass (and maybe bluegill) for stocking in the state were hatched there, but they also raise walleye/saugeye, northern pike, catfish and white amur. 
Rathbun is a state of Iowa fish hatchery too - and if you are talking about the DNR freshwater display at the State fair, those are wild caught in the days prior to the fair and generally released after.