We used to bowfish them all the time off the beds on Fork until we realized that, with a castnet, we could usually get both the male and the female in pretty quick order. It's been years since we've done that, though - now that I'm older, I find that it's much harder to navigate those stumpier lakes with night's worth of whiskey on the brain. Bumpin' your way back to the ramp is a sport for the young!

Well said Strangler! I got grief for keeping one over 20+. Heck, I even got grief for weighing one incorrectly & releasing it. I'm all for conservation & protecting the species, but these guys gotta take a chill pill & relax a little.

Also, some people seem to forget that NOT EVERYONE has the luxury to fish for just the pleasure of it. Maybe, just maybe when some people realize that money doesn't grow on trees, they'll understand just a little bit.

Years back we used to fish a private pond that the owner told us we needed to take home as many Bass as we caught "that year"( or bring them up to his house) we asked him why and he said just wait a few years and you will see, well we did what he said..reluctantly, well he was right a few years later the size and quality of the fish we caught was off the hook ! We later founf out he was a retired fishery bioligist, for the state of Oklahoma.

So you were bowfishing bass from the beds and then you were castnetting them later?

BigDozer66

Mike sure knows how to start trouble..

Oh yeah. Both ways will work, actually. You can get them with a car battery or a gaff, too. Out of a kayak, though, the gaff is alot easier. It's hard to throw a net or tote a car battery in a kayak.

Bedding bass are ridiculously stupid - they're certainly not gaff-shy. You can paddle right over them and swing down right on their heads. I got my first double digit bass on a gaff actually, but definitely caught more of them in the cast net, but that wasn't in a kayak. I do like getting them in a kayak, though, better than the jonboat. Something about using a jonboat makes it feel like cheating.

Bringing out some true confessions

...although a jonboat holds A LOT more bass. I can barely fit a single limit in my kayak.

Well this is a TEXAS Fishing Forum but not everyone here is in Texas so I have no way of knowing for sure except you said you did it on Lake Fork.

Your post has confessed to many, many illegal activities if you are doing them in Texas. With all of them combined it would easily be a very expensive fishing trip.

BigDozer66

I'm not sure I'm following ya'.

Well you said you bowfished, gigged? and cast netted bass off their beds in Lake Fork all of which is illegal in the State of Texas.

None of those ways of fishing and some others, gill nets, seines, spear fishing, snagging etc. are illegal for any Game Fish in Texas.

Game Fish (includes hybrids or subspecies of fish on this list):
�Bass: Guadalupe, largemouth, smallmouth, spotted, striped, white, yellow
�Catfish: blue, channel, flathead
�Cobia
�Crappie: black, white
�Mackerel: king, Spanish
�Marlin: blue, white
�Pickerel
�Red drum
�Sailfish
�Sauger
�Seatrout, spotted
�Sharks
�Snook
�Spearfish, longbill
�Swordfish, broadbill
�Tarpon
�Tripletail
�Trout: brown, rainbow
�Wahoo
�Walleye

Game Fish Definitions

Legal means of taking fish

Both of these can be found at the above links.

BigDozer66

I see what you're saying, but it's all good. We weren't eating the bass we were catching, but yes, if we were, we certainly might've gotten a ticket! But yeah, we were just catching bass to use as cut bait on juglines for gator gar.

I can't imagine how long it would take to catch 30-40 bass on rod/reel to bait all the juglines we would put out!

Is this a BIG JOKE? Or do you really not understand the laws?