Home Forums Fishing Freshwater This is why I love goggle-eye

They are great eating and there is no better trotline bait when chasing big flatheads.

There may be some confusion here. There are two species that look similar but are different fish. There is the rock bass/goggle eye and then there is a Green Sunfish. The Green Sunfish AKA rice field slick is an excellent bait for Flathead but not so good on the table. miles

The regional differences in names is quite interesting..I have heard both red eyes and rock bass when people are referring to smallmouths.

Be it Google eye, Warmouth , rock bass. Fun to catch and eat. Great fighter for their size.

My experience not bad eating

My friend, Andy, in Piermont, NH, stocks his freezer with rock bass from th Connecticut River. They are super aggresive, so that makes them fun to catch and it keeps the fishermen active. Great fun to catch on small Flatfish, Rapalas, River-Runts, and Super-Sonics.

Jeff

I've been catching them at our place in Ontario since I was big enough to sit on Grandpa's lap in an old Herter's fishing boat (Gramps is gone, but I still have two Herter's boats up there.
We used to pull them in as fast as you could catch them, and they are nearly as good as eating as yellow perch out of that cold, clear Canadian water.
On a sad note, they have all but disappeared from hundreds of lakes up there due to the cormorant population. The birds were allowed to multiply unchecked due to the treehuggers who couldn't stand to see anything die, and they cleaned out many lakes of ALL fish. A cormorant eats his own weight in fish a day and dive to over a hundred feet depth. Multiply that by flocks numbering in the thousands, and the wonderful liberals of Ontario have a lot of crappy birds, no fish in many of the lakes, and the loss of billions of dollars of tourist revenue.

Will be going to the Tenn River next week for catfish and goggle-eyes and shad are what we use...

they will bite anything, and yep they are good to eat