Targeting Dogfish With Spinners And Worms / Bowfin Fishing Michigan Rivers / Michigan River Fishing

In this Michigan fishing video I am targeting dogfish aka bowfin on the river with spinners and worms. A few weeks previous I had caught a big dogfish and it gave me dogfish fever kinda bad. I accidentally deleted the footage of that day which was sad because I also caught my first ever river perch that day. Previous to 2020 I had only ever caught 1 dogfish and it was a complete surprise! Now that ive had a taste of the bowfin fight I am hooked!

Bowfin (Amia calva) are bony fish related to gars in the infraclass Holostei. Common names include mudfish, mud pike, dogfish, griddle, grinnel, swamp trout, and choupique. They are regarded as taxonomic relicts, being the sole surviving species of the order Amiiformes, which dates from the Jurassic to the Eocene, persisting to the present. Although bowfin are highly evolved, they are often referred to as "primitive fish" because they have retained some morphological characteristics of their early ancestors.

Bowfin are demersal freshwater piscivores native to North America, and commonly found throughout much of the eastern United States, and in southern Ontario and Quebec. Fossil deposits indicate Amiiformes were once widespread in both freshwater and marine environments with a range that spanned across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Now their range is limited to much of the eastern United States and adjacent southern Canada, including the drainage basins of the Mississippi River, Great Lakes and various rivers exiting in the Eastern Seaboard or Gulf of Mexico. Their preferred habitat includes vegetated sloughs, lowland rivers and lakes, swamps and backwater areas; they are also occasionally found in brackish water. They are stalking, ambush predators known to move into the shallows at night to prey on fish and aquatic invertebrates such as crawfish, mollusks, and aquatic insects.

Like gars, bowfin are bimodal breathers which means they have the capacity to breathe both water and air. Their gills exchange gases in the water allowing them to exploit oxygen for breathing, but they also have a gas bladder that serves to maintain buoyancy, and also allows them to breathe air by means of a small pneumatic duct connected from the foregut to the gas bladder. They can break the surface to gulp air, which allows them to survive conditions of aquatic hypoxia that would be lethal to most other species.

Northern snakeheads (Channa argus) are commonly mistaken for bowfin because of similarities in appearance, most noticeably their elongated, cylindrical shape, and long dorsal fin that runs along their backs.

The burbot, a predatory fish native to streams and lakes of North America and Eurasia, is also commonly mistaken for bowfin. Burbots can be distinguished by their flat head and chin barbel, long anal fin, and pelvic fins situated beneath the pectoral fins.[24]

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Reel Michigan Anglers is a personal passion and my gift to fellow fisherman. In the future I hope to do more informational fishing videos and cover different types of fishing all across the great state of Michigan. My goal, time permitting is to fish as many different bodies of water for as many different fish species as I can get try hands on. I am a lansing michigan resident working towards transferring to MSU for Fisheries and wildlife. My goal is to expand operations and bring more educational and entertaining fishing videos to my subscribers. In the meantime you can count on me for the occasional video outlining the the techniques and areas I fish for Bass, Pike, Walleye, Steelhead, Salmon, Trout, Carp, Suckers, Catfish and Panfish ect. You can see additional videos and other fun fishing related info on my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?... I Wouldn't be the fisherman I am today without other fisherman who taught me the things I know and I am a firm believer that the sport and conservation of fishing in Michigan is better when we share it with one another. Wether your trying to lean a new spot to fish, a new crank bait to try, advise on what fishing rod to use, what fishing line to use, what color spinner a coho likes, what color jig a steelhead prefers, how to rig live bait, match the hatch, understand fish migration, the effects of barometric pressure or any other aspect of fishing the best way to learn is from other fisherman. That combined with trial and error and pure time spent on the water is the key to improving your fishing game. The better you get the more fun it is and the more we share the fun with others the more future generations will benefit from it.

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