Local Fish

[AandA]

Underwater angling  ;D  I catch them with a hook and line.  Two years ago I contacted the DNR office in St. Paul.  I asked them if it was legal for me to angle, using a hook and line, while I was also underwater.  I explained to them that I wanted to angle for fish while scuba diving and free diving.  At first as ya can imagine there was a moment of silence on the line,  then using an incredulous tone the person said, " You want to do WHAT? :o"  The individual I spoke with said she would have to discuss this with her supervisor as she had never encountered this question before.  I re3ceived a phone call two days later from a DNR enforcement official who told me that Yes it was legal and that the same laws would apply to fishing above the water as when I chose to fish below the water.

Since that time I have done quite a bit of underwater fishing using a variety of techniques.  I've caught lots of good sized panfish, along with lots of the tastiest large and small mouthed bass.  I generally prefer to use a very short ice fishing rod along with a cheap spincast reel spooled with heavy dacron (easy to see) line, a small weight, and a single modest sized hook.  For panfish any bait works great or even no bait at all.  When yer in a good school they'll bite on a bare shiny hook.  If you want to catch the bigger ones, I've found that you need to use a larger bait that does not fit into the mouths of the smaller ones as well.  Now for those big bass you can use worms for bait, but if there are any bluegills or sunfish around the panfish will beat the bass to the bait :-\...  When I fish for bass I first bring down an old minnow bucket with a spring loaded lid, and collect a bunch of crayfish, sharing the occasional crayfish with the ever-nosy bass that show up.  They will virtually take them out of your hand.  A bass simply cannot resist the swimming action of a lively crayfish .  Well you can just guess what happens when I take one of the crayfish and place them on the hook,  spool out some line and drop it over some bass, WHAM!   

On a safety note there are some concerns not all that different from spearfishing.  Although I’ve never had a problem I realize that there are a couple of additional hazards with this practice.  Entanglement is one such possible hazard.  I never put out a whole bunch of line as it can be too hard to control.  I also carry more than one knife.  When actually reeling a fish in, you have to not get carried away with the fun and maintain your appropriate depth.  I could certainly imagine getting carried away (sometimes almost literally) by “playing” the fish rather than maintaining your depth. The final safety concern that I’ve found is that of..... addiction ;D.  Once you’ve done it, you really wanna go out and do it again.

I've attached a photo of a small bowfin that a friend and I caught and later released while free diving and a picture of a couple of couple of small mouth bass eying a crayfish.