Using blugill as bait?

Is it against the law to catch small blugill in a small lake and then use them at Lake Arrowhead as baitfish? I read that it was illegal to take game fish from one body of water and place them into another. I was going to go to plumb lake here in Wichita Falls and catch some bluegill to use as baitfish at Lake Arrowhead.

you can't transfer them in the water from the lake you caught them in. Honestly, you'd be better off catching them in arrowhead if you can find them, bluegill and sunfish always work better if you catch them from where you are fishing.

How about cut bait such as carp?

Cut bait is ok. The law is all about transporting the water, not the fish, the way I read that law, if you were to declorinate tap water and put your bluegill from the other lake in there you could transport them. But, please read the law and interpret it how you see it because I could be completely wrong. The way I read that new law it was very ambiguous, but putting carp on ice from somewhere else should be fine.

If you are bringing live bait to a lake it needs to be accompanied by a receipt from where you bought it......A lot of the striper guys got hung up on this since they keep shad at home to fish with, it basically makes that illegal to do.

Bluegill and other sunfish are not game fish. I defer to other posters regarding the water you'd have to use.

Little internet GW'ish ain't it? haha

So having a throw net is almost a must if you want to bank fish with live bait without paying a fortune for it at the bait shop.

Yea im sure when the corp let all the flood waters out of infected lakes to flow downstream into other lakes that all the zebra mussels just stayed put and did not go to the other lakes. Seems like this was the super bowl of spreading the zebras. But they are worried about a couple of cups of water from inside your boat or bait bucket. STUPID!!

Or take an ultralight outfit rigged for sunfish. Catching your own bait that way is fun.

But you must remember that all these people that make up the rules all went to different high schools together. Some of them may have even went to school in Kalifornia.

I did read on the TPWD website that personally caught bait can only be used on the water (lake/river) where you caught it. Theoretically, they'd like to rule you can't approach a body of water with live bluegill in a container, for instance, because they could assume you are bringing them from elsewhere. However, at the same time, the regulation also says that you can leave one location (boat ramp) of a body of water and relocate to another location on that same body of water without draining the boat, but that the most direct route must be taken.

The regulation seems terribly written, conflicting, and ambiguous, and certainly a big pain that puts anglers at risk of citations. Again, theoretically by statements from the TPWD website, one should be able to launch at Ramp A, catch bait, reload, then move directly to Ramp B on the same lake, with no requirement to drain the boat. The bait was caught in THAT lake, and you're taking it to another ramp of that lake. You really haven't broken a rule, but I won't be the one to test that - I have bad luck!