Conference wahoo::fishing-v2

    
    I one caught one on a red devil that was skimming across
    the surface of the water. I made a lousy cast and began a quick
    retrieve so it didnt have time to sink and I got him.
    
    Walt

    Well, if you're up north here, and you're tooling around shallow
    waters, you may have landed a lure right on/over the inky black pool of
    bullhead fry. The two parents hover over the pool protectively and even
    team up to attack anything that approaches in a threatening manner. (I
    once had both attack my face mask at the same time on a night dive, and
    I didn't even know I was near the little black cloud that makes the
    adults so aggressive.)
    
    Anyway, you'll be seeing aggressive behavior in yellow bullheads for
    about another week in northern New England.
    
    FWIW
    
    John H-C

    
    I have caught 3 bullheads over a period of years on lures. Two of them
    came on small jigs and the other one really surprized me, a
    spinnerbait. After catching big pickeral and smallmouth bass all day, i 
    hooked onto a 14 inch bullhead which fought better than most of the
    bass that was caught that day. I said to my buddie " i think i got a
    goodin" and when i saw that black head come to the surface, i didn't 
    know what to think. 
    
    mark

    A 14-inch bullhead?!?! 
    
    Where were you fishing? Are you sure it wasn't a "White Catfish?"
    
    Fourteen inches is a GIANT bullhead if it was of the Yellow Bullhead
    (typical of New England) or the Brown Bullhead (not rare in NE, but not
    common, either).
    
    White Catfish, which aren't really white at all, have been spread
    around New England, and I've even seen one comment by a usually
    reliable sourve to the effect that Whtie Catfish are native to New
    England. Other sources say the White Catfish is an exotic from the
    nether reaches of the continent.<g>
    
    John H-C

   Thirty some odd years ago my Dad and I went to a small farmpond at a dairy
farm in Berlin, MA to try some 'pout fishing. It had been a dry summer and the
pond was covered with a thick green pond-slime/algea. There were the bullheads
working the surface like feeding manatees.  I don't know if they were actually
feeding on the surface vegitation or trying to gulp some air because the oxygen
level of the water was so low they had to suppliment what they could get from
the water. The water itself was a few feet deep so it wasn't a matter of "fish
out of water" so to speak. As I recall we just dip-netted enough for a meal and
left. That was the only time I ever saw them work the surface like that.

Al

    Yes, bullheads will definitely feed on the surface, as well as in the
    water column. They are not bottom feeders in the sense that carp and
    suckers are bottom feeders. They are bottom dwellers, except in the day
    time when they sleep with their bodies at a 45-degree upward angle so
    their noses are against a sheltering object, which could be the
    underside of a dock support, a tree branch jutting high out of the bottom,
    or a ledge of rock.
    
    Bullheads will snare a piece of carrion off the bottom, but they do not
    take great mouthfuls of silt and thrust it through their gills the way
    carp and white suckers do.
    
    I suspect the reason one so seldom notices bullheads feeding on the
    surface is that they seldom break the surface when they do, and they
    don't make the splashing, snapping sound of some other fish, so it
    would be hard to tell you were looking at a feeding bullhead in most
    cases.
    
    Since fish acquire oxygen by passing water over their gills, it is
    unlikely that taking mouthfuls of air would be very helpful to them in
    acquiring more oxygen in a eutrophic pond. As a category of fish,
    catfish are very tolerant of very low DO levels.
    
    FWIW
    
    John H-C 

    
    I was fishing in sangerville maine.
    
    isn't bullheads the same as regular catfish, if so, i believe that they
    get bigger than 14 inches. On the lake i live on, i am sure that they
    get bigger than that. We are talking about a 2 lb fish here. Isn't the
    record around 5 lbs.
    
    mark

    Nope. A "bullhead" or "hornpout" is not a "regular" catfish. In New
    England, you have the brown bullhead and the yellow bullhead, the
    principal distinction between the two being the color of the two barbs,
    or whiskers, under the mouth (brown in one, yellow/white in the other).
    
    Right off the top of my head, I don't remember how many species of
    catfish there are in North America, but it's a large number. Maybe BC
    has a reference book handy. A full-grown bullhead might reach a length
    of 11 inches, but it would be a genetic anomaly.
    
    Other than the white catfish, which is thriving in New England but is
    not a native, I can't at the moment think of another catfish species
    typically found in New England.
    
    John H-C

	RE: Last few

	   I don't have a real good reference handy, but I do have an
	old, as 1991, listing of Mass. state records.  They list them
	as Bullhead, White Catfish, and Channel Catfish.

	Bullhead is a tie, one from Whitehall and one from Stiles
	at 3 lb. 8 oz.

	White Catfish was Baddacook Pond and was 9 lb. 3 oz.

	Channel Cat was from Ashfield Lake and was 26 lb. 8 oz.

					B.C.