Assault Rifles Stolen From Bass Fishing Shop

Thieves broke into a Bass Pro Shop in Macon, Georgia and stole 17 AR-15 military-style rifles. Now 17 Georgia homeowners cannot protect their families from the roving packs of savage Largemouth Bass menacing the Peach State. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is offering a $5,000 reward for info on the bandits, matched by the arms dealer’s lobby, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, for a total of $10,000. That’s about 3/4 of the retail value of the firearms and the amount of first-place prize money at a medium-sized bass shooting tournament.

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Image (“Bass-Shooting Season in Georgia”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Let Them Eat Carp

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources plans to process tons of fish and donate it to area food banks. The fish: Asian carp, several aggressive, invasive species bent on world domination. They can weigh over 50 pounds and jump 8 feet in the air, knocking over fishermen. They also destroy underwater habitat, vacuum up plankton and algae, crowd out other fish species, and have no natural enemies.

DNR pays commercial fishermen to take Asian carp out of the Illinois River. The result: Asian carp haven’t taken over Lake Michigan yet, and the state has a heap of dead fish, 150 tons in the last year.

Fish Rustlers Go to the Hoosegow

A Washington, DC fish wholesaler has been found guilty of buying rockfish from a gang of rustlers. A co-owner and a fish buyer will go to the pokey, and the company has been fined $875,000. The DC bass bandits were collared last December. The rockfish (Morone saxatilis or Roccus saxatilis), also known as the striped bass, is the state fish of Maryland. It was overfished for decades, and harvesting is tightly controlled.

A posse has been roundin’ up rockfish rustlers for some time. Convictions were based on investigations by a special task force of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Maryland Natural Resources Police, and the Virginia Marine Police between 2003 through 2007.

Barbie Hooks a Muskie

A true daughter of Minnesota, Ella Haag was out at Round Lake with the family last Saturday, the start of Walleye season. She carefully cast her worm-baited hook into the lake’s waters with her pink Barbie rod and reel. Ella is two years old.

Ella caught a sunfish and was reeling it in when the water exploded. A muskelunge had struck her catch. Carrie Haag, Ella’s mom, grabbed the pink fishing pole before her daughter was dragged into the lake and started hauling the big fish in. Grandpa David netted and weighed it: 20 pounds, more than Ella.

The family snapped a photo and released the finny beast. “I caught a shark,” said Ella. More here.

Giant Minnows Invade the Great Lakes

They’re minnows. Four-foot-long, hundred-pound minnows. Bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) and silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) were imported by catfish farmers to clear suspended algae from their fish ponds. Floods in the ’90s allowed the Asians to escape into the Mississippi River basin. Like many Southern migrants, they headed north to Chicago. The invaders are in the Lincoln Park  and Columbus Park lagoons and threaten the Great Lakes.

These fish are vegetarians, so what’s the threat? Asian carp are big and aggressive, and they eat 40 percent of their weight in plankton every day, starving out native species, prior finny immigrants, and shellfish. The mammoth marauding minnows have only one natural predator: you.

The big fish have been pond-raised for food in China and Vietnam for millenia. Chow down and save the Great Lakes.