In this thread
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=200863
a couple of posters so no way a kitten could be effective fish bait because fish don’t normally eat kittens. I’m thinking, if the fish is hungry and there’s a kitten swimming nearby, bye-bye kitty.
Is there an experienced fisherman in the house?
Eh, screw it, I’m goin’ to the lake with a sack of kittens :eek:
There are several accounts of Largemuth bass being caught with small squirrels, snakes or ducklings in their stomach. I see no reason why a small kitten couldn’t wind up in a similar situation.
These are very large bass mind you, 10lb+ at least. We fish for Catfish with whole bluegills (fish) that weigh up to a pound or so.
I can’t catch fish for anything, but I thew some flaming hot cheetos in the water and the fish seemed to like those ok.
Catfish tend to eat just about anything though… I wouldn’t be suprised if kittens were just as tasty as crawdads.
I don’t know about larger wild fish, but I know with my aquarium fish they will not eat “anything”. In fact, my aquarium fish are outright picky. Some foods they eat voraciously (frozen brine shrimp), while they will not touch zucchini; they do however love lettuce. So it seems to me that no, they will not eat “anything”.
I think they’d eat most anything. Worms are traditionally supposed to work well as bait, but I can’t see where a fish is supposed to come up with a worm any other day of the week.
Nanoda, fish find lots of worms in the water. Once when I was electroshocking about 2 dozen worms wriggled out of the bank under water when the current got near them. Any time it rains and worms come up to the surface gasping for breath near a water body some will undoubtedly get washed into the water. Even though most people don’t like trout fishing when the river is in flood I find it to be the best time. The fish are right up high on the banks (out of the strong currents) gobbling up all the worms that get flooded out. You don’t even have to cast, and I’ve caught trout which had dozens of worms in their stomacs. Not to mention many aquatic larval insects resemble worms.
Now about fish eating anything, that depends on the fish. What is it’s normal diet? There are predatory piscivourous fish, fish that go for large zoo plankton, microscopic plankton/algae, bottom feeders, top feeders, mid-water feeders, even strictly herbivorous fish… and of course the omnivorous bottom feeders like catfish. You can’t get an answer by lumping all fish into one generic category. It would be sort of like asking:
“will an land animal eat anything if it’s hungry?” - You know how varied that response would be… you talking blackbear or koala bear?
A partial answer is that some fish will eat just about anything, others will not; even to the point of starvation amongst plentiful food that they don’t prefer. Also many fish mistakedly grab at things that look like food. I’ve seen smaller fish strike at cigarette butts floating down the river and apricot seeds I’ve thrown in while ingoring my live bait. Even a lot of great white shark attacks seem due to mistaken identity of humans for seals from below. That’s why you can catch fish on such obviously phoney-looking lures as these:
I think it depends on the fish. Some fish are specialists and will only eat certain foods. Others will eat anything. Someone I knew once had an Oscar that would eat cheese doodles.
