Anyone fish pay lakes ?

Anyone fish or know much about catfish pay lakes ? Joined a pay lake buy sell trade ground on FB because they have some cool stuff in there but after a bit I got curious and started YouTubing. Well I'm not gonna get into how I feel about the whole "trophy" pay laked thing, but can someone explain to me why alot of these people are literally using 10-12' surf rods for fishing these little "lakes" that are like 50yd across ? Like I watching some so these videos and these guys are making casts with these set up that I can make really really easily with a 6' rod.

Pay lakes? Like, you pay a fee just to fish? That’s ridiculous. No way would I pay to fish from shore in a lake.

It’s bad enough I gotta pay for a fishing license

There is one close to me I have never been to. I have been tempted to take my boys because I don't have many places I know of to take then to fish since we moved to the farm and I don't know many people around there. But it two expenses.
I promise they would not be using anything more than a 25$ Walmart pole if I did take them

What kind of a place do you live in where its too expensive to take a kid fishing?
You should move for the kids sake.

That is unfathomable.
Paying for a fishing licence is bad enough.

Depends on where you live and circumstances. I'm fortunate in that a Tman member from here has a couple of large ponds that he lets me take my grandkids fishing at. If not for that, I really don't know where I could take them locally. I don't have a boat, so bank fishing is what we do.

In case you missed it ( and it seems like you did) this thread is about pay lakes. So I was talking about the cost of the pay lake being to expensive. Close to $100 for the family to go if I remember right.

That said it may not be expensive if you figured in the price of gas to drive 2 hrs each way and the time to get to my few old fishing spots that have not been sold off or gated up when comparing the two.

So originally what it was you had these place which farm raise channels that you could go and have a good time at pay a fee and catch you limit. Was something alot of peoel did with there kids or the elderly. Well now you have alot of place that are "trophy" pay lakes. Same set up usually but instead of just farm raised channel they catch or buy large trophy size blues and flats from commercial guy catching them from public water to stick them in there's ponds. Alot of them have fb pages and the will show weekly stockings of these fish in pretty big numbers in the ponds which are pretty small


From my understanding alot of these place don't really even feed or stock alot of forage in the lakes so their more prone to bite quick because a "hot" lake makes them more money. Not to mention alot of them have slots or tags where a certain size or type of fish will land you a cash prize. One video I saw had prizes up to $750 for a 50+ lbs fish .
Apparently there are some pretty nice ones that are set up nice lots of feed and oxygenation but apparently for these trophy lakes thats the exception more then the rule. Most have no cover oxygen systems really their just over glorified stock tanks

Like fishing in a big goldfish bowl. Fun for little ones but any healthy able bodied man should lose his man card and bait the hooks.

if any were here i would happily catch and sell them fish

I pay property taxes, that's all I pay. Wife has me cleaning fish right now three nights a week. Michigan has enough lakes one doesn't have to "pay" to fish, other than a license. Back in 1956 Dad saw some land for sale on one of his best fishing holes. He bought it and built a cabin. I now live here and picked up the land around me. Good fishing a short cast from the front door.

...and that about sums it up for almost everyone in the north part of the country.

A lot of the pay lakes in PA, you don't have to follow the PAFBC rules. No license needed, you pay by the pound, etc etc.

The one up near where PCR2 lives has a rule that you must keep all fish caught. So there's a lot of breaking off of fish when people realize the fish they have on is smaller. The older Japanese lady that sits on the balcony and yells at people for releasing fish is pretty comical. She yells at you in Japanese, but all the swear words are English.

Most of these places are also trout farms used for stocking local streams and lakes. You're not exactly fishing in the raceways, but dang near close.

As to why anyone would fish them?? There are people who are willing to pay money to stay away from the crowds that are trout season in PA. It's also a good stop for the tourists who are travelling across the state and need a break from the screaming wife and kids.

Pay ponds I have seen in the Stuarts Drafts, VA area. Not catfish. Trout is what's advertised.

It's a big thing around me. Mostly carp ponds though but some catfish. They have tournaments about every night of the week on them. It's usually a good spot for the local crackheads to hang out

For reference for the northern folk, "lake" is the wrong word for this. It's just a pond that someone stocks with carp or catfish and then charges people to come catch them. It's not state owned or maintained like our lakes, which are free

Terrible waste of big flathead catfish. Doomed to die a slow death in a gravel lined fishbowl. But the paylake cowboys really think they are doing something when they catch one

So anyway back to my original question, WHY THE SURF RODS ?

So you can man handle a big fish and not get it tangled in someone else's line.

I worked with a guy who was pretty big into pay lakes and he would travel around to a lot of different ones. My guess is they have the same setup for all lakes? Either that or based off if the guy i worked with is any indication, they really have no concept of actual fishing and just assume the bigger the rod the better kinda like the city guys that think the higher your truck sits off the ground the more h.p.

I think the long fish poles are to make up for the little-pecker-syndrome.
I know of one private lake in the Sandhills that is a pay lake for ice fishing. There are some 16-17" crappie in it and it's natural, not stocked. I paid once just to catch some big crappie.

in WI all water is owned by the state so technically the same fishing laws apply to all unless you have a fish farm license.

there are some pay by the pound trout ponds here.

and if a little creek flows in or out of your pond technically someone can walk up into it as long as they never go above the normal water level

luckily we have some very good waters in WI with county , city and state owned launches.

the Sugar River near where I live has ok fishing in places , it has a nice network of portages and canoe & kayak launches so that you can take it clear across the county if you want.

the kids were able to ride their bikes to the river and fish. when school was out I would sometimes drop my son off with the canoe and he and his friends would fish all day I would pick him up after work. they did a lot of fishing and a little catching but that is good for kids to be out on the river all day.

That place is about 40 minutes from my camp. I take my granddaughter there occasionally.

In one pond you have to keep what you catch. In the other, larger pond you pay by the hour and can keep or release. To me it's worth it just to see her having a blast and catching us supper.

We also fish the local rivers and have a lot of fun with that.

Probably to horse the fish in faster. Especially in instances where there is a "derby" going on.

Sounds like some more of that "instant gratification" people haveto have now days.trophy catfishing is like trapping that old coyote that's been outsmarting you.or catching that last smart beaver out of a pond.catching a 50 pound flathead out of a little pond that someone else has already caught and put in there just ain't right.eaven if it is kids.i know people that have fished half there lives to finally catch a fish like that.put in tons of time on the banks fishing every chance they get.the reward is not just finally catching that big one they been chasing for so long,but the fun they had and the memories along the way

And as for the surf rod,sounds like just the mentality of the kind of people that would fish those ponds.bet there vehicle is as equally out of perportion

that or they have to look cool doing it

there are people who just have to build their rifle to look like what they saw troops carrying in Iraq , when half the guys there would have been doing it different if they had the options at the time.

my son had a friend who jus to have a Eotech holographic sight for his AR , it is 20 year old tech and not very clear and not worth the cash he doled out for it but it looks right to the guy aesthetics wise

my son and him went hunting last week and the friend is starting to com around to utilitarian what works and not worry about looks , at least just a little bit.

and that is about the time my wife would say , "wonder what he is compensating for ?" must be hard to have such poor self esteem .

I don't catfish, but I do fish for musky's with a 9 foot rod and heavy lures and you can throw a lure with 100-pound braid a ridiculous long distance as opposed to the old school musky rods that were like a pool cue. I use bulldogs that weigh a pound sometimes and you can launch one a long way. Lighter lures go even farther. It also makes it easier to do figure 8's at the boat with a longer rod.

There are some trout ponds in Western NC. Took my daughter to one when she was little. She made one cast with a push-button Zebco that had about 10 feet of line, a hook, and a piece of pork rind. She caught a 2lb trout within seconds and had no desire to make another cast. Ready to do something else.

That's what most gripe about. Every Tom, Richard, and Harry fills the rivers with hoop nets to catch all the old big fish to sell to pay lakes. People that wont pay can't catch big fish anymore in lots of places. It's all fine and legal but no big fish are released anymore. I've seen first hand what it can do to public fishing. Basically puts a bounty on every wild big fish and all are killed....lots of them are thrown in a ditch after pictures. I said it would be illegal soon, but that was 30 years ago.

As far as the big rods, most have already answered. Some of these lakes are decent size and the surf rods help casting distance especially with big baits. Plus they look cool.

they do a fairly decent job of keeping that type of thing from happening in WI

no selling fish without a commercial fishing license and quota

no nets

very limited bank lines and trot lines

each person gets 3 lines only

10 a day with 20 total possession limit on cats you have to start eating them or giving them away

many lakes are implementing slot sizes on game species now

if you want to feed your family on fish you best like carp, sucker, cats , white bass, rock base and pan fish and fish year round but if you enjoy fishing for fishing there are a lot of good waters

Not many pay lakes here away from the city, to many State/Fed land with lakes/ponds/streams to fish for free, (other than a state permit, $7), but you pay to get in and so much a lb for what you keep. No surprise they go bust pretty quick, however you're almost guaranteed to catch fish.

Those flats have been in a hoop net.

Pay Lakes are the fishing equivalent of a High Fence deer operation.

Basically, you just described a "pay-pond", just a larger size.

My opinion is that it would be great for a kids first fish or if you wanted to go get a mess of fresh fish really quickly. [/quote]

Yeah, we have a bunch of pay ponds down South. But at most they cost maybe $2-3 a day. And what’s bad is we don’t even keep the fish, lol. We just enjoy catching them.
Never heard of pay lakes before.