Went to calaveras on fri night, fishing was slow and wind was bad.

Cought 8 dink cats and 1 red.

How can i get away from the dinks at calaveras and how can i catch bigger reds? Also I saw many fish hitting the top of the water around us, They made a huffing sound when they busted the top of the water, i guess they were reds. I threw top waters dead shad on bottom and on bobber. I also threw a rattle trap all at no prevail. HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!


Also when we cleaned the last fish out of calaveras the meat had yellow sections, it didnt look healthy why is that?

The surfacing "huffing" fish are plecostamus. They are everywhere. If you got a good set of polarized glasses you will see them when they surface.
As far as the cats, try wind blown shores and some of the deeper water near the crappie wall and between the dam.
Manufactured baits, shad, perch and tilapia should be all the baits you need on Calaveras.
Hope this helped

Calaveras is overun by them!

I saw one for the first time a few years ago and wondered what the heck it was, that maybe some space alien had dropped it into the lake as a sick joke, but no it's just a tropical fish that probably got dumped from some aquarium into the good ole San Antonio river and now the rest is history.

Sure wish those netters could find a commercial use for them or maybe there is????

Disgusting little critter that gets tangled in your cast net!

http://aqualandpetsplus.com/Catfish,%20Plecoctomus.htm

I understand that the plecostamus eat catfish eggs,I saw something in parks and wildlife about killing them when caught.I think they called them "armoured catfish"
Did anyone else read this?

So how do i get on the reds at calaveras?

Fish the wall with a ballon rig or the telephone pole carloina rigged.
There is a hole near the dam that also should be goo dright baout now on the SE side of the dam near the reeds.
There is also a hole as soon as you launch on the reeds on the right side of the launch where many a red and blue have been caught.
Crappie wall is easiest and almost a guarantee if you want to wait them out and fight the crowds.Ballon rig here with a SSE to the dogleg.
USe shad, perch tilapia or shrimp.

I think your right about the armour catfish Eric. I caught one on Lake Dunlap two years ago and it freaked me out. Catch them all the time in the net but only once on a hook.
I dunno about them eating eggs but it seems likely.
I'm not sure of their ecological impact on the lake and fishery but it can't be comepltely positive.
They are still the only fish I won't handle. PLiers only and I've handled alot of fish from sea to sea but they freak me out for some corny reason.
I wish they were out but they have thrived in the lake and would be impossible to eradicate their presence.

Cliff: I'm the same way! Been handling fish all my life, and never any qualms about picking one up, but those things just don't seem right.

Kind of reminds me of a fish version of a roach. Kind of gives me the same reaction.

Anyway, I read they can't survive in cold water so what we need is a hard, hard freeze, but with the power plants going they would just all congregate in the hot water discharge, but maybe some commercial netting to sell for cat food?

I saw them by the thousands in the cove leading to the bouys by the power lines. They were hugging the bank on both sides and was a pitiful sight.

I always seem to snag a few of them when fising the dam area with rattle traps.... Yep and i refuse to touch them also!!!

I don't know about the eating eggs part. I've had plecostomus in my freshwater aquariums for twenty years now and they have always been strictly algae eaters. Never seen them touch any other food I put in the tank. Just algae.

hillbgcntry where is the telephone pole? We fished on the other side of the lake where the low bridge and pipe line are, then we mover to a cove past the dam that had a water drainage tunnel at the end, that where i cought my red for the evening. Then we went to the dam. Houndreds of pocostamus must have been there, they were all over the place.

Does anyone have any other hotspots for striper or reds, I dont realy like the wall. To crowded. Is this wall almost always a gauranted catch?

Anyone have some pictures of these fish that they could share?

Charles

I just read this on the Texas parks & Wildlife website about those weird catfish (pocostamus)
Roger

Bonner and TPWD fisheries biologist Gary Garrett are particularly concerned with impacts on native fishes — some of which are threatened species — from a South American import commonly known as armored catfish or armadillo del rio. This creature (Hypostomus plecostomus) is undeniably cute — and useful — as it vacuums algae off aquarium gravel. But when you place that same fish into a spring-fed stream, it turns into an ecological disaster. Armored catfish can grow to a foot long, and because they are covered with bony armor plate, almost nothing can eat them. They wipe out algae that other fish depend on for food. Worse yet, as they vacuum the bottom clean, they eat eggs of other fish and keep them from reproducing.

I hope the name armored catfish doesn't stick because they don't look nothing like a catfish, and don't even feed on the same forage like our beloved catfish.

More like an armored carp or black carp, or black roach as I would call them, but to degrade the catfish by naming that lake roach after them is sacrilegious.

More in Mx

Holy Cow!

TP&W says that their efforts to bait and shock the Pleco hasn't worked, so I guess we have got to learn how to cook the ugly things..maybe with a lot of catsup !
Roger

wonder if they would make good trotline/jugline bait?

Just watching that video makes me wonder how soon, if not already, that we will have a major problem, and I thought those Talapia where a scorge.

Hummmmmm.....wonder what those would do to the bay system if they are in the S.A. river?

Several years ago they stocked and then abruptly ceased stocking the Orange mouth Corvina because there was fear that they would get into the bay system and hybridize the speckled trout population, on the coast, so they quit stocking them in Calaveras after a short period.

Maybe TPWD has a predator fish they can stock that will wipe them out?

A couple of sharks might do the trick!

maybe they would make great plecostomus gumbo. Just makes your mouth water thinking about it...
Roger

Anyone have a pic of a coravina or how to catch them at this lake?

They come from California waters, and look exactly like a speckled trout, but without the spots, and have an orange coloration in the mouth area, hence the name, but the main difference was they grew to huge size, such as 20 to 30 pounds or so, and fought like the dickens.

They stopped abruptly with the stocking, and the rest that were in the lake were eventually caught out, and they didn't reproduce because they could live in freshwater, but needed to be in salt water to be successful, was my understanding.

I personally caught them, and they were fun to catch, but I doubt there are any in there since it was back in the eighties if my memory serves me correctly, but maybe someone knows more accurately on the date they were stocked.

They stopped suddenly stocking them when someone at TPWD decided that it would be risky if they went through the spillway area and into the river which leads into the bays, where they could cross with the speckled trout, and hybridize the species, or so I was informed by TPWD officials, and which it was published in the papers back in that time.

Calaveras and Braunig where two experimental lakes that TPWD played with back in the eighties, stocking various species because of the warm waters.

http://www.mexfish.com/fish/omcorv/omcorv.htm

34" long, 17 lbs 6 ozs. Caught on chicken liver

Link didn't work, Tim...PM the link to me and I will post it.

I got it, thanks Alien

Just curious who did the taxidermy work for you?

That's one of the bigger ones that I've seen!
I'm curious because I used to mount fish back in the eighties when I had my own business that I did out of my home, and I did several of those Corvina for customers.

Jim's Custom Mounts was the name, and that fish looks like one I might have done, because of the driftwood it looks like the way I used to mount them, but most guys mounting them back then did a really nice job with the color and all!

Jimbo, a woman did it. She does almost all the fish mounts in the area now. Joy Romano I think is her name.

Thanks and I know her. Her and her husband had just opened a shop in Leon Valley, don't know if it's still there, but I talked with her a few times when I was in the business, and even refered some of my customers to her, when I got out of the business, because her work was similar to mine.

She does a fantastic job! Thanks!

Those armored catfish, or algae eaters, will hit on Danny Kings or Marv's cheese bait. I catch them all the time when I'm fishing for catfish off the pier at Calaveras. One day, I caught 3. Another day, my 6-year-old granddaughter and I were fishing off the pier, and she was fishing a rattletrap and she caught one of them about 18 inches long. I didn't know that they were so prevalent in the lake. I thought that the ones I was catching were just an oddity that someone had taken out of their aquarium at home and threw into the lake. From now on, any I catch won't go back into the lake alive.

cliff, Do you know of any good fiberglass boat repair guy who does good work. I have hull damage needing to be fixed.

Al