Quote:
Originally Posted by silver_snipe
MG I thought gafftops primarily fed in the water column on live bait like trout do. Versus the hard heads that are bottom feeders and primarily eat dead. I know when I catch large gafftops it has been under a popping cork same as trout.
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Gafftops will occasionally pursue prey in the water column. We've caught them on shrimp under a cork and on live lined croaker. But we catch a lot more of them fishing crabs on the bottom for redfish. The only day we didn't catch any bull reds at the jetties in 2013, we got into a bunch of big gafftops and put a dozen or so in the box, including the 3rd and 7th place Louisiana records.
I've read several papers analyzing stomach contents, and while fish and shrimp are important parts of their diet, gafftops feed mainly on the bottom. Zoobenthos, benthic crustaceans, and crabs (mostly blue, but all kinds) make up the bulk of their diet. They have pharygeal teeth at the back of their throats that allow them to crush crabs, and thin shelled molluscs, but they probably cannot crush oysters.
Gafftops can definitely be fast and agile predators when they need to be, but their long barbels give away that they prefer to slowly cruise the bottom and eat the bottom critters that their barbels detect in their wide swath.