Microfishing Attempt #1

Yesterday I went to Lake Gilmer Park to experiment with microfishing. I used the size 20 hook I ordered from Amazon and used hot dog bits as bait. I stood on the swim beach, where I could see many tiny fish. As soon as I would lower my tackle into the water, fish would bite. Unfortunately, the fish were really good at nibbling the hot dog bits off the hook without actually biting the hook.

Since it was really hot, I decided to quit and try to find a different bait. I stopped by Academy on the way home and bought some Power Bait maggots, thinking they were more sturdy and therefore less likely to be stripped from the hook. I ate dinner and rested for a while, and then went to a fishing pond in a city park to try the maggots.

The pond is heavily fished and I didn't expect anything but micro species to be in there. As soon as I lowered my hook, sunfish would bite...without stripping the bait. Then I ran into another problem: I had a hard time unhooking the fish. I didn't like standing there and yanking and pulling and turning, trying to get the hook out while the poor thing couldn't breathe. It was especially horrible when one of the fish got hooked through the eye and I had to get someone else to remove the hook.

I want to treat the fish as humanely as possible and minimize its injuries and was stumped. I know absolutely nothing about fishing and you many laugh at me, but I used the Internet to research what to do and found that barbless hooks exist and are recommended for catch-and-release fishing. No struggling to remove a hook. I also learned how to de-barb the hooks I already have. I'll do more experimenting this coming weekend to see how it goes.

Overall, I caught several types of fish. I didn't catch every species I saw, but it was a great success.

Posted on July 18, 2017 12:52 AM by cosmiccat