Reducing Incidence of Nuisance Catfish

[Top Dawg]

I've had gaff tops swallow 12" mullet while juggin for gars.

[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by Top Dawg

I've had gaff tops swallow 12" mullet while juggin for gars.

Yeah, with that big, big mouth gafftops can swallow some big bait and are harder to deter. We're considering experimental designs to bring test the magnet deterrent in the gafftop world. At $1 each, the rare earth magnets may not be cost effective in deterring gafftops in actual applications, but there is scientific interest in knowing how many different species of teleosts (bony fish) can be detect and be deterred by the magnetic fields.

And I'm paying on the order of $0.40 per hook and $1.00 for the fluorocarbon leader when I'm chasing bull redfish. We don't mind the gafftops yet, but it is conceivable that at some point we'd need the cracked crab to sit a bit longer at the bottom unmolested by the catfish. The gafftops swallow the hook most of the time and I just cut it off and rety without killing the fish to retrieve the hook.