As far as I know it is legal to use bluegill for bait if they are caught in the same lake you are fishing. As for turnover in Murray, I don't know for sure but my bet is water temps are still in the upper 50's which would be quite a ways from turnover temperatures.

Murray Turnover: As of yesterday thermocline is gone and surface debri is too. Seems a few weeks ago was turnover as mixing debri was everywhere.

speaking of live bait….i seen a bob mesikomer video where he claimed live bait can hurt the fish, yes if it swallows the hooks and dies, but also in another way. He states that when a fish takes that sucker into it's mouth, it's taste sense send messages to the stomach to start producing acids to dissolve the food when digesting. But on like a quick strike rig, when you set the hooks and they go into the fish and it gets no sucker to eat, those acids built up in the stomach have no place to go, so they eat at the fishes stomach. Giving the fish acid indigestion or acid reflux, or something like that, and it causes severe harm to the fish, or possible death.

Now does anyone out there know if there is any truth to this, any studies to prove it one way or the other?

yea i hear ya, i thought about live bait rigging myself, but am not sure if it will harm

Still a thermocline in Murray.
Becareful when using live bait.(yes I do it to once in a while).You will be
sick when a nice muskie gets deep hooked.Trust me, I know, I killed a
32" out at Thorn a couple summers ago.It swam away with a deep hook, but I know in the back of my mind what eventually happened.Since then,
my use of live bait is very seldom.If that was a upper 40 or 50 incher I
truley would have been sick.
Whatever you do DONT let the fish have the bait for like 30 seconds or
so like you hear all these rookies do before setting the hook.You are
asking for a dead fish in my opinion.

"Duke" said:
First rule in muskie fishing: don't believe a thing that Mehsikomer says.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA – Those weeds smell like muskies…

If stomach acid killed muskies they would be floating all over because the same would happen each time they ate a lure. Muskie anglers spread just as many myths as non-muskie anglers.

Here's my opinion on the live bait subject:
Live bait is good when fishing with kids, under 12. Most can't cast for hours on end and watching a float or listening for a clicker is fun for them. If you are over 12 then live bait doesn't need to be part of your game.

Again, just my opinion.

Using Suckers is a blast. Its fun and its a good way to add a fish or two to your season. The bottom line is quick setting the hook. We hit our fish as soon as the fish has the bait. This eliminates deep hooking every time . I have had smaller artificials get taken deeper than any large sucker. Tuff Shads for one. Rapala super shads for two. You just have to set the hook immediately . Yes sometimes you miss them this way. But its better then having to live with knowing you killed one. Using live bait is both effective and ethical. The best part is having a sucker set right at Boatside where you can watch the Musky chase it down and dogbone it. We had three fish up on one sucker at the same time last year and have a picture of it showing two of them circling the sucker. I do not trust circle hooks or any other swallow tactic. Any hook left behind will kill the fish. Any single or treble hook works well for quick setting but trebles hook up better than large single hooks but Single hooks that are barbless do much less damage to the jaw than trebles . I dont use Single hooks because I miss 60% of the fish so instead I use 3/0 Slasher hooks now which are thinner and easier to remove than traditional quick set rigs.Kingfisher

Ok so at least we can all agree BM is a retard- hmmm BM??? what else does that stand for….

Anyway on the issue of stomach acid killing fish uuhhh no. Not unless they are in the stomach. The chemical system in a fish is similar to any other predator. When there is an excess of acid ie low ph the endocrine system will sense this and release buffers to bring the stomach to its normal operating range. There is a coating to the inside of the stomach which prevents the "acid" from getting to it. When there is no coating like an ulcer then the acis is a factor. This is not caused by stress, even in humans, we now know that Helicobacter Pylori and not lifestyle causes ulcers. So unless you are going to quick strike rig a half-pound burrito from Taco Bell I would not worry about that.

The issue of lactic acidosis is entirely different and occurs in the muscles when there is not enough oxygen for the cells to use in the production of adenosene tri-phosphate as cellular fuel. When oxygen is lacking the cells will switch over to short term anaerobic respiration which is much less efficient the result of which is less energy per chemical reaction and a greater amount of waste in the form of pyruvic acid. this acid can only be converted with the presence of oxygen. The bigger the fish the harder it is to get oxygen to all the muscle cells that need it. Since the arteriole structure of a fish is limited and the capillary beds are much larger it takes a long time for the new supply of oxygenated blood to get to their muscles. Fish cant increase their oxygen intake nearly as much as humans can in times of need which multiplies the problem. You have all heard this before but think of it this way. Every minute you play a fish is equivalent to you running up about fifty stairs. First fifty- no problem. Second fifty (if your in good shape like a fish) a little more of an issue, after that pure hell. Now at the top of the stairs you are shoved into a tight space where you cant breathe well (a net) and then after that you are held up in the air and asked to hold your breath for pictures. Then all you have to do before you can relax is run back down all those stairs with a limited supply of air left in them and then you can relax. This is why you don't release tired fish over deep water. They do not have the energy left to stay in the littoral zone and recover. They need to be able to sit down at the top of the stairs (shallow water) and chill for a while.

Many people don't understand this because for catch and keep it does not matter if you "play them out" however for good catch and release the fight needs to be shortened and the release immediate. Of course fish that are too green can cause problems as well.
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KK

First of all, Duke, I LOVE your post! It was predictable, yet you said it even better than I thought you (or anyone) could! I even told Bryan the other day that you would say that very thing! Besides, we all know that muskies regurgitate prey (what animal doesn't at some point) as others mentioned above. I saw the muskies in my tank do it a million times. They lived. Furthermore, Mr. Duke even has his own original muskie bait color that features a partially swallowed/digested look. It's the NDE – Near Death Experience color. By the way, Will, great comment about a good application for live bait.

Nice fish Michelle! Well my thought about live bait. I read alot about guides useing it for whan the take people out fishing to get a fish for people. And as long as the person who is useing it knows how to use a quick set rig and fish is not hurt then use it. Me I like to use frogs for pike. I tryed a quick rig one time with no luck but oh well. I get a lot of small pike on tip-ups and I guess they live when I let them go if they are under size. But it had to tell when you let them go under the ice. The lake I pike fish in the spring I have not seen any pike floting in the spring. So I think most of them live. But then they are pike to. Just my thoughts.

LeMay OUT