Brook Silverside minnows - Night fishing

[borg]

Hi all,

I have been doing alot of night fishing this summer since it has become so hot. I have been using an invertor to run muliple 110 volt compact fluorecent lights hanging over the side of the boat. Within a few minutes the lights attract large numbers of adult silversides which in turn bring in sandbass and crappie. As the water temperature heated up I just had to go a little farther out in deeper water to find the fish. The water temperature has peaked and even dropped a few degrees but is still warmer than when I start the night fishing.

I have always caught large numbers of sandbass and crappie until the last two times this past week which I caught absolutely nothing!!! I fished the same spots but could not attract any adult sized silversides. I attracted plenty juvenile sized silversides but no adults. The last time I went, we had a full moon. The time before it was 3/4 full.

At first I thought the moon just had them scattered, but if that was the case I should have at least come across some adults from time to time. I even cruised around the lake looking for them but found none.

Now I'm beginning to believe they may have been spawning in the shallows. Does anyone know the spawning habits of this fish? If they spawn during a full moon, do they spawn every full moon in hot weather?

This is a smaller lake (Dripping springs in Oklahoma) and there appears to be no shad population in this lake at all, and the silverside appears to be the bottom of the food chain.

[CrappiePappy]

check this out : Fishes of Minnesota-Brook silverside

Here's a better picture of a Brook Silverside (better than the pic in the link) -



These little guys are one of the best Crappie baits there is !! And with your unique situation, of having them be the primary baitfish of this body of water, you should really take advantage of that. Catch them and use them

I've caught Crappie on Silversides .... alive, dead, whole, or cut in half ... night or day.

Now ... being as you're in Oklahoma --- you may have the Inland Silversides in your waters. Here's a picture of an Inland Silverside ... note the difference in how the mouth looks :



In either case ... I'd bet that they'd be excellent bait for Crappie or White Bass (Sand Bass, as you call them). They're not too hard to catch, but they are a bit of trouble to keep alive for any length of time ... which is why I know that Crappie will still bite them, even when dead (whole or cut).

... cp

[willk]

wow crappiepappy you have taught me a lot. I didn't even know what those were called. I know they are good bait. I used to catch them in a dipnet when we ran out of shinners. But they died and I was afraid to spook the crappie. Thanks for the info.

[CrappiePappy]

wow crappiepappy you have taught me a lot. I didn't even know what those were called. I know they are good bait. I used to catch them in a dipnet when we ran out of shinners. But they died and I was afraid to spook the crappie. Thanks for the info.

... since I was a teenager (I'm 61 now)

Used to catch them in a dipnet, when fishing a local lake with my grandparents. Right after dark we'd go along the bank, with a Coleman Lantern over the side of the boat, and dip them up as they followed the light. A 5gal bucket full of lake water was our "minnow bucket" for them. If we ran out, we'd just go down a bank and catch more. My grandparents called them "Skipjacks" (one of their nicknames) ... and I was probably over 50yrs old, before I knew them by their "proper" name :p

Later on in life, (my late 20's) I used to fish the same lake with a retired postman friend ... we caught them in the pre-dawn hours, then fished with them during the morning hours. When we got down to the last few ... they were dead. We cut them in half, and continued catching Crappie with them. When my partner asked for one ... I would reply back .... "Heads or Tails" :D ... but, it didn't really seem to matter, as both worked equally well.

We hooked them thru the eye socket ... not how we hooked regular minnows, which was thru the back, under the dorsal fin. That may well be the reason I hook my minnows thru the eye socket, now ... having learned/remembered how we hooked Silversides.

... cp