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I'm very glad that my decade long autistic fascination with redfin pickerel has caught on with some of you. They are an underappreciated and beautiful animal. I have a good mind to buy a piece of land with a ditch, dig out 20 yards or so of it, and try to create a sanctuary for them. Tbh, I'm very worried that they won't survive in my pond. I'm still trying to clear all the duckweed out and I know that if it all dies at the same time it could deplete the oxygen and kill everything. Also despite years of reading everything I can find about the redfin, I'm still not sure that they can survive in ponds. Beaver ponds yes, 100%, but those are still fed by running water.
Weighing in favor of them possibly surviving in my pond is that these beautiful little fuckers can survive in half dried up mud hole ditches. So oxygen and water quality shouldn't be too big of an issue.
The other big concern I have for them is their ability to coexist with bass since they undoubtedly would be preyed upon by bass over a few pounds. However, in at least one creek in which I have caught redfin, bass were also present (along with warmouth, crappie, and bluegill) so again, it appears not to be too great a hurdle for the redfin.
They really are such a beautiful fish, I hope they are always with us. Tbh I feel kinda bad for having the first one I caught mounted. I've killed and eaten many hundreds if not thousands of fish in my life. But it seems different. I have a connection with this fish, I hunted him for so long. But I will adore and honor his mounted body until I die, maybe light a candle and burn a lure on the anniversary of his capture. In any event, I was considering starting an event on these threads, the Redfin Roundup so to speak. I'd encourage anyone to pursue this beautiful animal and, like I've said several times, I'm always down to talk about them. Right now the score to beat is a cunt hair shy of 10.5 inches.
