Future of bait fishing in AZ from AZGFD

Good article from azgfd about possibly using the native Sonora sucker for bait fishing on a large scale. I personally only ever used minnows for crappie fishing, other than that, I took the bait fish from the lake, mostly bluegills for flatheads.

"In recent decades, using live baitfish was the best way to catch your dinner. But with more and more people practicing catch and release, fishing with live bait has become less popular, almost to the point that if you do use live bait, you could be criticized. This is because using live baits typically results in deep hook-sets that make releasing a fish back into the water unharmed a challenge.

The other challenge — from a management standpoint — is that all of the well-known and legal baitfish species are non-native to Arizona and can have detrimental effects on native fish and other aquatic species.

They are good for bait because they are easy to raise, and they survive on a hook."

read more/full article: fishazblog.com/2017/02/12/future-of-baitfish-in-az-problems-and-solutions/