Would they work with those Asian Carp ??

I never tried it for those asian carp....but I doubt it. Heck back in the 80's there weren't any around.

There are other traps that work for them though. Combination of nets with funnels. Fluke nets I believe is what they are called. Here in a local river the comm. guys can catch 1000's of lbs a night with them.

I targeted mainly bigger 20lb+ blues. Skin and filets chunked. I usually only went after fiddlers for myself. Loved it as well but the hardest part for me was collecting enough bait to keep 300 hooks baited.

Most folks don't know those barges have a dead spot where you can't hear the engines coming. That spot is directly in front of the tow as the tow blocks the sound. My river was pretty narrow, just wide enough for one way passage of a single wide tow, and twisty between bluffs. Those beasts could be on top of you before you knew it. More than once running lines at night I've looked up to see a bow light bearing down on me.

It was interesting making that run to the bank as they passed by, the undertow would literally suck the water out from under the boat and leave me in the mud until the water returned.
The lines were bad to get twisted up from barge traffic until I figured out just how to rig them. Each dropper was attached the its own swivel that was threaded onto the line and could freely rotate around the main line the each main line had a barrel swivel and snap on each end. Every part of the line was free to swivel independently.
That and plenty of weight to keep them down saved them from barges but couldn't do nothing for what usually happened around this time year when the rains came and flushed logs downstream. If I were still on my river I'd probably be pulling lines about now.

Warrior I know those feelings. Tn. river (KY Lake) is a wide river/lake. Of course the tows run the channel 99% of the time. But with weather conditions and/or wind they will get out of the channel and create havoc with fishing gear. I can't begin to recall all the times I had those big boys sneak up on me in the fog. Sometimes in the middle of the day or night it didn't even have to be foggy.

The Cumberland is a narrow river. With a lot of twists and turns. Not only would the tows sneak up on ya, but on that river you learned real quick how they handled the turns. Most of the time you want to be on the inside of the bend, but not always. A lot depended on which way the tow was headed, current at the time, and even how that particular captain drove his boat. I have had the head barges close enough I could push off of them with my hands. Most captains were pretty nice fellas, but some I think tried to get ya sometimes. Best way to deal with them was to know the rules and give them all the room they needed. A 18ft. river boat aint no match for a multi ton tow.

And yes, they do suck the water out from under ya. One way I could tell if one was coming that I couldn't see was by watching the water. If it dropped real quick, I knew one was coming. It is hard to believe just how much water they pull.

Snowy don't mean to hijack your thread, I just enjoy talking about things I have done and things I have really enjoyed.

Oh yeah, almost always run to the inside as the channel runs outside and I've seen some of them knuckleheads put the tow on the bluff and scrape their way around. I've heard tell that downriver where things flatten out they even take the tows across cow pastures and cornfields when the river gets up in the spring. Rule of the road, biggest boat rules. LOL

Sometimes I really do miss my river.

good read , thanks guys

No worry about hijacking not a problem one bit. I and a lot of others I bet enjoyed your experience trapping fish. Very interesting and thank you for sharing those stories.

Cool Trap Snowy

I used those basket traps back in the late 60's early 70's when we commercial fished here on the Mississip. When you'd find a deep hole carved out under a bank edge about 15-20' deep you would anchor the end, pull the trap out diagonal to the current tight then drop it and let it roll up under the bank. We used the same method with hoop nets depending on river levels.
The round ones were called basket traps and the square were box traps, at least that's what we called them here on my part of the river. During the winter we use to make a bunch of both back then too and also made/fixed nets. A relative of mine still makes little box traps and gives to relatives just for show and he still commercial fishes just for catfish for relatives and family fish fry's and maybe a beer or 6.

Uncle Dave

I always used them this time of year. Very good for catching fish to stock ponds with. Have a power plant nearby with hot water discharge and they work great in it.

The best fishing this time year was on the other fork of the river, the mulberry fork, that we called the big river. Gorges Steam Plant discharged into the river and the water would be warm a mile or two downstream. Skipjack and shad would pile up and so would the cats.

Great stories.

LOL While fishing them back then I also had a power plant near me. On the water it was about a 20-25 min. ride. I headed up there one cold cold day, against the advice of an old timer, to set a few baskets. I couldn't find a spot big enough that didn't already have one!! Everybody that owned a basket had beat me to the punch!!! LOL I would have liked to know how many cats were caught on a given week right there.

It was mentioned about the tows going across pastures and such during high water. I never seen that but I did see tows a long way from where they should of been. One broke loose slidin around the checker board bluff one night with two of the barges wound up in the tree tops about a mile down river. One got pushed sideways and went down tearing out a bunch of trees with it. When the river dropped back there was chunk coal all over that island. For a few days.....LOL Later that winter ya could smell coal smoke everywhere. Folks down there never let anything go to waste. Some kids made a good chunk of money selling that stuff.

One part of comm. fishing was finding stuff along the river. There were spots all along them where you could see where the injuns had had camps. It was pointed out to me by a fella who worked at the Smithsonian Inst. We would stop and pick all sorts of artifacts. Right where I was there was all sorts of Civil stuff too. The canons of Ft. Donelson were said to be right there but were never found. With the better sonar now I am surprised some one hasn't found them.