A sucker for respecting native fishes

“Coolest fish for me was a river redhorse that hit a crankbait early Saturday morning, leading to about a four-minute battle before it was landed,” Vince Oppedisano mentioned in a September report on the Fox River. “This was the biggest of three redhorse I’ve caught so far this year on the Fox River (in the Elgin, South Elgin and Batavia pools).”

   I loved his respect of redhorse, but the rarity of river redhorse in the Fox made me check with Olaf Nelson, who identified it as a silver redhorse.

   Illinois has six redhorse suckers. The river and greater are state threatened; shorthead, silver, golden and black redhorses are more common.

   Chris Taylor, curator of fishes and crustaceans for the Illinois Natural History Survey, emailed, “There used to be seven species found in Illinois that could be called redhorse, one went extinct in the early 1900s. It gets a bit confusing because that extinct species’ common name is the harelip sucker [Moxostoma lacerum]. However, it is in the genus Moxostoma like all of the other redhorse species so it could have easily been named the harelip redhorse.”

   Then came a discussion with Nelson on sucker identification.

   Nelson was a traditional angler until 2007. Blog posts by Wendy Berrel (a pen name playing with nature poet Wendell Berry) led Nelson to buffalo and other native “rough fish.”

   ”That changed my whole world, rewired my brain,” he said. “I spent decades fishing over top of these fish that are bigger and more challenging than bass and trout. Whole other world down there that is more interesting than bass or trout.”

    He found roughfish.com, then developed moxostoma.com, focusing on suckers with posters and downloadable cheat sheets for identifying suckers. He was outside the paradigm of bass, trout, walleye, muskie and pike.

  For IDing redhorses in Illinois, Nelson begins with the tail.

   If red, it’s a shorthead (most common), greater or river. Then check the mouth, “If the thumb fits in easily, it’s probably not a shorthead.”

   For gray-tailed redhorses, check the dorsal fin. “If convex, curved upward, it is a silver,” Nelson said. “Flat or concave, golden or black; but they can be difficult to tell apart.”

   He gave other sucker ID help. Scales near the head on a white sucker are small, substantially bigger at the tail.

   ”Coolest one is the hogsucker, nothing looks like it,” Nelson said. “Once they are big enough, there’s a unique, black ring around the lips, looks like lipstick. Some call them goth suckers. . . .

   ”Redhorse in general, usually are pretty simple, gold or silvery, scales same size front to back; very streamlined, fishy shape. . . .

   ”Buffaloes are the trickiest. They are big and do have a similar shape to common carp. A lot of people kill them thinking they are carp. All three buffalo species look gray in the water, but are iridescent out of the water. They have plain black eyes. . . . Unlike carp, they don’t have barbels next to their mouth.”

   I think quillback carpsuckers (high first ray on the dorsal fin) are coolest.

   Nelson said six sucker species are commonly caught around Chicago: white sucker, hogsucker, smallmouth buffalo and the shorthead, golden and silver redhorses.

   ”The suckers are all native species,” Nelson said. “They are not related in any way to carp.”

   Divisions engendered by use of “game fish,” “rough fish,” and “sport fish” lead to scenes such as Nelson documented of bowfishers slaughtering spawning quillbacks in Kendall County, then leaving the dead fish on the bank.

   It’s past time to end those terms, then restart with basic divisions of native and non-native.

   Take Illinois bowfishing regulations. The 26 native species listed as legal to bowfish are virtually unregulated and include catfish, gar, buffalo, redhorse, bowfin, bullhead, drum and carpsuckers. Imagine the howls if bowfishing was allowed of “game fish” like bass, walleye, pike or muskie.

   ”A lot of people assume anything classified like carp must be like carp. That’s not true,” Nelson said. “As a native species, they evolved in these waters for millions of years. If you eliminate any of them, the whole system gets out of whack. . . . 

   ”Suckers are food for predatory fish and eagles, and hosts for native mussels. When spawning in a creek, they are releasing millions of eggs. They are transporting nutrients up rivers and tributaries, like salmon on the West Coast. That benefits fish, birds and, of course, people.”

  Change begins. Minnesota passed the “No Junk Fish” bill this year.

  “More people are becoming aware that fish are worth the effort to maintain in a sustainable way,” Nelson said. “Minnesota is really moving in a good direction. I really hope we can follow suit in Illinois.”