To me that is a part of my cleaning routine.
For years I can't clean a fish without looking at it's stomach contents and seen what they ate. You can learn a lot about habits of fish and it adds to the fishing experience of really goes on around you on the water. It makes you look at the lake from a fishes perspective. What is really available for their supper?

Also like to check the sex of the panfish I caught. You will be amazed when fishing crappies under the ice or in open water there will be times they will be all males or the opposite,all females.

absolutely , not so much pan fish, but pike-walleye-lakers. about a year ago i started a thread about things found in fishes stomach, i had just caught this walleye that had a few small bullheads in it. and a few winters back caught a pike that had a few snails in it.

Over the years I have found small walleyes in bass,walleye and northern pike stomachs. Of coarse northern pike eating bass and too many trout if they are present especially in a stocked stream trout lake.
Once I checked northern pike stomachs in a lake stocked with rainbow and it had northern pike also present because someone tore apart a barrier keeping pike out.

Anyway,one northern pike had over 12 8-9 inch rainbow trout in its stomach,it was just bulging. Them poor trout were just stocked and never new what a northern pike was until it was too late.

On one lake I find lots of bluegills in walleyes' stomachs. Yeah, I always check. I caught a fat walleye a couple years ago that was full of rock bass. OF course, it's not unusual to find a bunch of store-bought minnows with hook marks on 'em either.

I usually check stomachs. I one lake trout lake I frequent, the trout are typically loaded with leeches.

quote lundojam: "On one lake I find lots of bluegills in walleyes' stomachs. Yeah, I always check. I caught a fat walleye a couple years ago that was full of rock bass. OF course, it's not unusual to find a bunch of store-bought minnows with hook marks on 'em either."

Often those minnows are yours-meaning mine when I go fishing.

For sure!

Always gotta look........

This past summer in Woodland Caribou I caught a nice fat pike which had a rather smallish crayfish in its belly. Come to think of it I have always had good luck catching northern on crawdad colored cranks.

I always check. The last time I was in the BWCA we kept a decent sized pike. I was surprised to find it full of dragonfly nymphs.

I used to, but no more. It never helped my fishing and made my fingers stink of rotten fish for days on end.

quote mastertangler: "Always gotta look........


This past summer in Woodland Caribou I caught a nice fat pike which had a rather smallish crayfish in its belly. Come to think of it I have always had good luck catching northern on crawdad colored cranks. "

I caught a pike last summer with a crayfish in its stomach, too. I was surprised and figured it was just bass that went for em. This was in August.

A lot of times when I check a stomach there's not actually anything in there... Or there are minnows that have been digested to the point of being basically slime. I wonder how long it takes for a fish's meal to digest?

i,ve caught lake trout with crawfish in there stomach, if it swims they will eat it.

not so much with the stomach's anymore since we don't keep very many fish, but in those days never really found much. I'm always interested in what they spit up when reeling in. We have caught a lot of smallmouth in Quetico that spit up half digested perch, crawfish and mayfly larvae. I've read a lot of fish expel one way or the other the contents of their stomach when being reeled in.

last year on cirrus i found a gulp minnow in the stomach of a lake trout

quote zski: "last year on cirrus i found a gulp minnow in the stomach of a lake trout"

Interesting,and you think you are in the middle of nowhere.

quote zski: "last year on cirrus i found a gulp minnow in the stomach of a lake trout"

What color was it? Can you please send it back? You can PM for my shipping address.

When I was a kid had a SMB spit up a 2ft garden snake once in the Q while fighting her. Glad it didn't come out while on the fillet board!

When my kids were young, that was always a highlight, regardless what was being dressed...fish, deer, ducks, squirrels, etc. Squirrel stomach contents were always a disappointment for them...those nuts all pretty much look alike at that point!

We always check stomachs of the few eaters we keep. Yesterday, every brown we kept was chock full of crayfish. This guy had 8 crayfish --

We usually have one fish dinner on the last night. So, sometimes early in the week we throw fish back....then near the end we start to get nervous that we may not have enough! Two years ago while staying on Agnes the time was getting thin and we were a bit short yet and my son and I were getting a bit chippy with one another.

"Fine" he says. "I'll go get rest myself." And off he paddles.

Later he returns with one last eater we needed caught on a silver tail dancer and it's stomach was the exact match of that lure.

That was pretty cool to see.