Hog Suckers on the North Fork

   Lately, I have been realizing that gamefish may be fun, but a true challenge will come from a rough fish, such as the northern hog sucker. I have recently become fascinated by rough fishing, simply the sport of fishing for non-gamefish. To some,  the hog sucker is a junk fish, to those people I say: "Just because it's too hard for you to catch one, doesn't mean its a junk fish". Hog suckers and suckers in general have a bad reputation, because they are hard to get to bite and they are usually caught accidentally and they get in the way of other target species. 
    I have been fishing the north fork of the rivanna for many years and I have always viewed hog suckers as a algae eater that wouldn't bite untill recently on roughfish.com when I saw stories about people who target them. That got my attention, and I spent hours and hours doing research on how to fish for hog suckers. I discovered that the main problem is getting in range of feeding fish, and presenting the bait, without spooking them, and I had never bothered with being stealthy when fishing for them, when they spook, they simply sit realllly still and hope their camo works, I just thought they were really calm and unaware when they were doing that. Little did I know...
      I  grabbed my field and stream 5'6" ultralight, with a sahara 1500 spooled with 4 pound mono, and rigged up a large split shot about 12 inches above a size 6 light wire crappie hook. I brought worms, corn, mini boilies, and powerbait to try for the hog suckers.  I found a pool with a school of maybe 20 10-15inch suckers, but the bass were taking my bait before it would get to the bottom (oh shucks, another 2 pound largemouth). I moved up into some 1 foot or less flats that I always see suckers feeding in and soon spotted a nice 7 or 8 incher. After about 7 or 8 casts, I made one that put my worm about 5 inches up stream from his nose, and he soon swam up to the bait and started rooting around, so I waited about 5 seconds and set the hook. The fish started going nuts but it was so small I just pulled it in and netted it, to my dissappointment, the fish was foul hooked, so I wasn't going to count it as my first, and kept fishing.

     I worked my way up to a gravel bottom and spotted a big one rooting around so I took 5 casts and finally placed the bait where it needed to be, the fish made its way up to the bait and I felt two tiny ticks on my line, so I set the hook and the fight was on, to my surprise, the fish actually peeled 3 or 4 feet of drag and jumped once, but I wasn't worried about the hook coming out, because they have thick rubbery lips. I brought him to the net, took a few pictures, and released him, so after 4 hours of fishing, I finally got one. And now I know how to fish for them, so plan on seeing at least one post strictly about hog suckers. Thanks for reading!