I grew up in Louisiana and we called 'em Grinnel and the old cajuns I used to fish with called them Choupique or Cypress Trout. What color eyes did it have? We've caught 'em both with green and red eyes.

We used to skin 'em out, grind 'em and make fish balls out of them. Rather eat a Sac-a-lait or Chinquapin any day than them Grinnel balls!

No Thumbing That Critter. Fight like Heck with alot of Attitude!

nail em to a tree ! LOL!! (just kidding).

good fighters. nasty teeth, and goodbye to your lure that is now mangled beyond recognition.

When i was younger the river would get low behind our house. The bowfin would bunch up in the deeper holes during the summer. We would catch small perch and cut them up for bait. Ive caught them up to 15 pounds and yes these fish when hooked are a battle. Ill never forget those summers catching those funny looking, mean as hell bowfin!

Are there any bass in that lake? I have fished just about every pond and little lake in the wodlands and have wondered about that one.

Starr,I never been much good at catchin sacs or chinqs.Grinnel either for that matter.But I have stumbled on them all on occasion.And in our family,to catch them was to eat them.No fish was deemed unfit for the table.

If this is the lake I am thinking of (the one where the canal reaches the feeder road by 242), I had a friend who fished that lake and he said he caught quite a few small bass, and that it seemed that the lake did not get much fishing pressure because it was a pretty steady bite. Have you caught anything of size in there Bass Trailer?

I hope to catch one of these someday. I spent most of my childhood in the Amazon jungle and there were some very similar fish there that were very aggressive. I want to closely examine a bowfin for comparison.

We called them "fasaco" but I believe the real name is "Hoplias malabaricus" or "Wolf Fish". If you google Hoplias malabaricus and click on images, there are lots of nice pics.

These things would actually rush out and bite you if you happened to be wading by. They have some sort of slime on their teeth that make a bite hurt a lot more than it should.

robertwb, I've only fished that pond 3 times, all within the past 2 weeks. There is some bass in there, however, the biggest one we've caught was about 1-1/2 lbs and smaller. Of course, this is the slow time for bass right now. I would like to see what it produces during the spawning and warmer months around here.

The only thing I'm concerned about is that someone from another forum told me that he once saw a DPS officer issuing some sort of tickets to some fisherman that were back there fishing. He said he didn't know if it was for trespassing or what.....I'm actually thinking twice about it now. It may be private property, but who's don't know....

Caught a 9#'er in Little Caney on Fork several years ago, fought like a Marlin!

GOOD INFORMATION. I CAUGHT ONE AT LAKE WINNSBORO FOUR YEARS AGO AND DIN'T KNOW WHAT THE HECK IT WAS. THANKS!

Those fight like crazy. They will trash a rattle trap.

never caught one, but would be a surprising fun catch though. anyone ever catch one of these that they thought might have been a bowfin, grinnel, dogfish?

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/exotic/snakehead_bowfin.phtml

I caught one on Fork a number of years back- thought I had a state record LMB. I didn't know what it was, so I called my papa in the nursing home. He knew immediately, saying, "thats a grinnel, throw it on the bank. Their bad for the bass." It probably was about 10lbs.

These things appear and behave a lot like a snakehead. If you don't know what snakehead is, google it. I say throw em to the bank and let the wildlife benefit.

Unless, of course, the wildlife in question is a bowfin.

They were swimming in our waters before the "bass" even evolved. I'd hardly say they were bad for the "bass".

More to the point of the post though; that is a nice bowfin, the only one I ever caught was down near Houston as well. Amazing fish, too bad they (or any fish) get labeled as trash.