Mayan Cichlid for bait?

[BasalCell]

I've got a huge pond in Palm Beach County (SE Everglades) with a tremendous amount of mayan cichlid and talapia that I want to get rid of.

There are lots of normal small blue gill, speck, longear, a few triploid carp and some pretty big Golden shiners in it. I've caught channel cat in this pond several years back weighing a couple of pounds...by now they should be getting pretty fat.

Anyways... I was wonderin' if anyone has used the non-native Mayan cichlid (Atomic sunfish) as bait for cats and how well they worked?

[Phantom309]

Hi John;
I haven't, don't really know, but welcome to the forum.
I would imagine they'd work just fine, only one way to find out........
Later,
Danny

[Pirate Jerry]

Fillet some and/or cut'em into chunks. Ought to work just fine.

[BasalCell]

Thanks for the welcome.

Yeah, that was my next move. Split one open and send it flyin'.

Today I was up at the pond chummin' a new hole I found and was watching a turtle followin' around a duck eatin' it's dung as it swam around... This was funny... the turtle got a little to close and nipped the duck in the butt and that duck went nuts flappin' and swawkin'.

Anyways...I'll see how it goes. Now that I've been tryin' to fish them Atomic's out, they don't wanna bite... probably the cold weather. But I'll fill y'all in as soon as I get the chance to use it for bait.

[BasalCell]

Update:

No cats yet but the Mayan's love to eat their own kind. There's enough of them in there that I'll keep one pole loaded and continue to investigate.

Til I get some more info.