Root River Round-up 2009

About this time every year Eagle Cliff campground gets crowded with anglers. Some would describe them as Roughfishers, others as non-traditional anglers, but to us we are native species anglers. As a walleye or smallmouth bass is native to some parts of our state redhorse and suckers have a wider native range. The Roughfish round-up typically happens during the annual walleye opener. The crowds of anglers are off to the lakes and we find solitude, in our group, having the river mostly to ourselves with 1000s of willing fish to handle.
The world record golden redhorse comes from this place. It is known for its annual runs of white suckers, northern hogsuckers, silver redhorse, golden redhorse, and shorthead redhorse. These are the fish that native species anglers chase. Some of these anglers have never caught some of the species and come here in attempt to add that species to their lifelist.
There were 30 of us there this past weekend. We caught nine different species of fish; silver redhorse, golden redhorse, shorthead redhorse, northern hogsucker, white sucker, brown trout, rainbow trout, river carpsucker, and smallmouth bass. We enjoyed the fellowship and left satisfied.
We didn't break any world records however many anglers got to handle their first hogsucker. All in all it was another successful Round-up. I am looking forward to next May when we do it all over again.