The Ultimate Stocked vs Wild Fishing Challenge

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Today we are doing the ultimate stocked versus wild fishing challenge. First we are going to catch fish that have been raised in a hatchery and stocked into community waters. Then we are going to catch those same exact fish in their wild natural habitats where they were born and raised.

[00:00:15]>> We kick it off.

[00:00:18]Please be what I need. Fish on. Fish on.

[00:00:23]Another one. Are you kidding me?

[00:00:24]>> Are wild fish actually smarter than stocked fish? We're about to find out.

[00:00:28]We are starting out with America's favorite fish, the largemouth bass. And even better, we're fishing a tiny stocked pond to catch them. Before I make my first cast though, if you guys are new to my channel, welcome. Consider hitting subscribe. It really, really helps me out, and I promise you guys will enjoy this video. The thing about the bass here in Arizona is they can be caught on all sorts of weird things, including something that us as Americans like to enjoy, the good old hot dog. So, what I'm going to do first is I'm going to put a hot dog down on the bottom and see if we can catch ourselves a bass.

[00:01:01]Now, I've never really heard of this happening in the wild with the wild bass, but the stocked bass, for some reason, really, really like hot dogs.

[00:01:09]This is uh just kind of how it works here in Arizona. I don't know why, but these bass absolutely love hot dogs. So, I'm going to go ahead and break off a small piece of bars hot dog. We're going to get it on our drop shot hook here.

[00:01:25]And we're going to poke this through.

[00:01:28]This is the best way I found to keep on these hot dogs if you haven't cooked them yet.

[00:01:33]I know I could cook them, but I got these on the way here. I'm a busy guy.

[00:01:37]So, here we go. Our first bait to catch us hopefully a stocked bass in this tiny pond is a Barz hot dog. So, I'm going to go ahead and throw this right out in front of us and then I'm going to grab my top water and see if we can get lucky with that. So, we will start straight out towards that airator. I'm sorry the sun is kind of in your guys's face.

[00:01:58]I wish it wasn't, but I'm going to leave that there. We have a nice little breeze and we will watch the bobber kind of drift along here and hopefully it goes under and we catch ourselves a nice little bass.

[00:02:14]While that's sitting there, I'm going to go ahead and grab my top water and see if maybe we can get a top water bass blow up to begin our day. So, we have the Cho here. I've been using this a ton lately, and I'm going to kind of target this area over here.

[00:02:28]See if maybe there's any bass that want to bite this top water.

[00:02:35]I haven't been to this pond in a bit, so I don't really know what's going on recently, but I'm hopeful.

[00:02:44]that there's some fish to catch.

[00:02:50]This pond is so small. I can literally make a cast to the other side of the pond.

[00:02:56]Not that it does me any good, but Oh. Oh. Oh my gosh, guys. We got a little blow up. Oh my gosh. That was a little blowup. No way.

[00:03:08]Oh, I got to do a followup.

[00:03:14]Oh. Oh. Oh. Our line. Our line. Our line. Our line. Oh my gosh. Our hot dog.

[00:03:18]Our hot dog. Our hot dog is moving.

[00:03:23]Our hot dog is moving.

[00:03:26]Got him. Got him on the hot dog. Got him on the freaking hot dog. What do we got?

[00:03:31]Is it our target species? Is it our target species? I think it is.

[00:03:37]Oh, well that didn't take too long at all. Guys, that my friends is a tiny largemouth bass on a hot dog. We're going to let this fish go. Thank you, hot dog bass. I appreciate you a ton.

[00:03:50]First fish down. Now, we're going to move to our second species. You guys probably know what this one is. Species number two we are going to be targeting is the StockX channel catfish. There are plenty of them here in Arizona, so I chose a little landlocked pond to see if we can get one nice and fast. Now, I'm not really as worried about the stocked catfish, but the wild catfish here are a little trickier to find in Arizona. So, we're going to have to see if we can get that done later down the line. Well, you guys know catfish like stinky stuff. So, we're actually going to stick with the same bait that we use for the bass.

[00:04:19]We're going to use a hot dog here.

[00:04:20]There's a bird right here, bro.

[00:04:23]What's up with it?

[00:04:26]Um, we're going to use a hot dog for the catfish as well. The only problem in this pond is there's a lot of small fish that will a lot of the times peck this off. So, I hope we don't run into that issue. We're using a slightly bigger rod for this even though we probably don't need it. But, you know what? Got to do it. I'm going to go ahead and thread this hot dog as best as I can on the circle hook. I know that isn't the neatest bait presentation, but if we get a nice fish, that will do the job.

[00:04:58]Stocked catfish. Can we get it done? You guys know I can. We pretty much built my channel on stocked catfishing. So, I'm going to throw it right towards this airator.

[00:05:08]And the fish here usually slam it pretty dang good. So, let's see what happens.

[00:05:21]You know, worse comes to worse, we might have to catch a a little bluegill and cut them up as cut bait because they can't peck that off.

[00:05:31]This hot dog is gone.

[00:05:38]This one's still going.

[00:05:42]kind of got this one. Got this one. Got this one. Let's go. What do we got? He feels solid. He was just sitting on it forever. Is this our cat daddy?

[00:05:58]Oh, what is that?

[00:06:01]Oh, it's not a catfish. It's not. It's not.

[00:06:06]Ah, it's one of my mortal enemies, the tilapia. I absolutely hate these fish. They're all stocked here in Arizona. Kind of a cool pattern and everything and they're not bad when you catch them this big, but they get in the way of all other species and they are just a hassle, guys. Well, some buy catch. At least he looks cool. Let him go, though. Need a catfish. Let's get some more bait in the water and see what we can do.

[00:06:32]People got dogs off the leash over here and killing me.

[00:06:40]See if maybe we can get a catfish this time.

[00:06:45]Excellent.

[00:06:56]Not going to lie, I didn't think this would take this long. I figured we'd have a catfish by now, but I guess I was wrong. But hopefully it's not going to take too much longer cuz I don't have all day.

[00:07:05]Oh, immediately hot dog. immediately hot dog. Oh my gosh.

[00:07:13]The heck is going on here? Is my bait gone?

[00:07:18]Oh, I have him. Oh my gosh. Again, literally backto back cast, guys. Please be what I need. Please be what I need.

[00:07:28]Please be what I need. He feels a little better. Yes, it is. It's a cat. It's a cat. We just got to land him now. We just got to land him. I literally casted right into his mouth, dude. Come on now.

[00:07:40]Yes. These guys are awesome. They're in like all the ponds and the canals here.

[00:07:44]We got them down. We're going to let them go and then move on to our next species. All right. Our third species takes us to this muddy spillway. And you guys know muddy water. And maybe you can guess what we're going to catch next. It is the common carp. Now, I'd say I have a lovehate relationship with this fish because they are fun to catch, but they get a little boring after a while. So, so we're going to get some bait in there. Hopefully, this won't be too long at all. This water's looking cocka brown. Maybe I'll throw some bread in here and see if we can get some coming up to the top of the water.

[00:08:15]If carp's not your favorite fish, don't worry. We actually have a species that we need to travel about 2 hours out of town to catch and we could actually catch both the stocked version and the wild version in the same place.

[00:08:28]Oh my gosh, look at all those fish coming up for the bread.

[00:08:32]Dude, I don't think that's what we want, though. All right, guys. Before I make a cast, let me just say carp are everywhere here in Arizona. Canals, ponds, rivers, lakes, they are so so common. Um, and because of that, they are stocked in like all the ponds here, but they also exist in the wild as well.

[00:08:51]I believe they were introduced and obviously they took over and they thrived because there are some massive carp here. I think the state record is like 40 lbs. So, yeah, we have a pretty good chance at getting one very quickly here. Um, I just threw some bread right there. We'll see if we can get something else to come up. It looks like just baby bait fish for right now.

[00:09:11]But instead of trying to bait them up, I'm actually going to just throw a piece of bread on the bottom and see if we can get in front of one's face. This clarity right here is perfect. Hopefully, we don't get pecked off. But here we go.

[00:09:22]We're going to use a small little piece of bread. Is there something in front of the camera?

[00:09:28]What the heck is that? It's like a spider, weirdo.

[00:09:33]I'm just going to try real quick.

[00:09:37]I didn't bring a net. This would be a good spot for one, though.

[00:09:52]Yes. That's one right there, guys.

[00:09:54]That's one right there. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. Yes. Please stay on.

[00:09:59]Please stay on. Please stay on. Please.

[00:10:04]I'm going loosen up on him just so he doesn't pull the hook.

[00:10:08]God, man. They pull so hard no matter where you hook them at. He's trying to go up in this pipe. That's our target species, too. That is our target species. Let me put this one in the rod holder so just in case it gets bit, we don't lose him. Yes, dude. Yes.

[00:10:27]Little stocked carp. But like I said, no matter where you catch him, they always pull hard. So, see if we can get him up here, he's not hooked very well at all.

[00:10:39]Oh, come on, dude. Always bring a net.

[00:10:43]Got him. Let's go.

[00:10:46]Let's go. There's a common carp. That is our third species of stocked fish knocked off the list.

[00:10:55]Well, guys, after almost a 2-hour drive, we are here for our next species of fish in northern Arizona. The special thing about this spot is we could actually catch stocked and wild in the same body of water. Step number one is getting down this hill without hurting ourselves. So, let's try and do that real quick. Well, here we go, guys. This is a spot I've fished quite a bit. So basically these fish, as I've said before, they are raised in a hatchery.

[00:11:20]Then they are stocked in a wild body of water like this. So these are stocked fish in a wild creek. We're going to use one of my favorites here. This is a trout magnet. I've been using them a ton here in Arizona and they're just absolutely killer for the stock trout.

[00:11:37]So we're going to get this on. I'm going to go with a little bit of black and chartreuse. They come with these little jig heads in a bunch of different colors. And uh color does matter sometimes. Today I'm going to hope that it doesn't. But we have a little potsky fire float on here also. Um I know I'm mixing two brands. You guys will be all right. I love you both.

[00:12:03]And we did bring some bait here for the stalkers as well if this doesn't work for some reason, but I'm pretty sure it will. So we have that. We have our bobber. And the goal for this is pretty much to naturally drift our bait nice and slowly over the fish. And this usually gets it done. Um, if it doesn't get it done for some reason, we can take off the bobber and start twitching it.

[00:12:26]But I'm pretty sure this is going to get it done here. So, here we go. First cast.

[00:12:34]We got 4 lb leader. Little ultra light.

[00:12:36]Oh, something in the bushes. Oh, I just got bit and I wasn't paying attention.

[00:12:40]That's a good sign, guys, cuz sometimes there's not fish in here.

[00:12:46]The anticipation is killing me again. I keep turning around every time I get bit.

[00:12:53]So, we're basically just waiting for that bobber to go down. We set the hook and we have them on most of the time.

[00:12:59]Oh, there's another bite. There we go.

[00:13:02]We got him. Look at that. Oh, he's jumping.

[00:13:05]Look at that. All right, let's see if this is a stalker. I believe it is. I believe this is a stalker. That easy, man. That freaking easy. Now, this is a really small one. They do get bigger than this, but I'm just going to show you guys. This is a little stocked rainbow trout. Pretty accessible to most people. They even stock them in the urban areas sometimes, but they're so much cooler to catch up here in the northern places. So, I'm going to let this fish go. Bingo. First stocked fish knocked off. Our next objective, however, is to catch some wild fish. But before we do that, I think me and my dad are going to catch some to take home because that's always fun. And then uh we'll we'll target that wild fish in here. Also, let's try this pool down here.

[00:13:53]This is a stocking hole, guys, but there could be a little wild trout in here for us. So, we're going to try.

[00:14:04]It's got to be with the fly rod. Let's walk a little bit more.

[00:14:19]I know this water looks really little, but this is where these fish live.

[00:14:40]I mean, in here, why the heck not, right? See if we can kind of shoot it.

[00:14:51]Come on, baby. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's exactly what we need. It's exact. Oh, no. No. No. It's a rainbow. It's a rainbow. Dang it. Dang it. Dang it. Dang it. I mean, I know complaining at a fish, but I was really hoping it was our our wild one. This guy's going to be stalked. That's okay, though. We hit him with a sick bow and arrow cast.

[00:15:19]I think we're going to keep this one for dad.

[00:15:22]Fly rod down. Not quite what we wanted, but hey.

[00:15:27]It's a good sign, I guess. All right.

[00:15:30]Well, we're not hiding this spot. That's what we're dealing with, guys.

[00:15:36]Only problem is we got to keep walking cuz there is no water to fish right here.

[00:15:41]Well, guys, it's been a little walk and we can finally hear water. So, hopefully we run into a fishable spot here in a second.

[00:15:52]Don't want to walk up and scare anything because stealth is required for these fish.

[00:15:57]This water is super shallow.

[00:16:01]This is just where wild fish live. So, I'm going to see if this is going to be feasible at all in this little hole, if you will.

[00:16:14]That pool looks really nice. I'm thinking we might be able to get one out of there.

[00:16:20]I'm going to see if we can get a fly placed just perfectly. See if we can get a fish out of here.

[00:16:31]This ain't going to be easy, but definitely doable.

[00:16:37]Let's see if we can do this, guys. Can we get our wild fish?

[00:16:48]Oh, I had one. I had one. First cast.

[00:16:54]I had one.

[00:17:03]Come on.

[00:17:10]I'm pretty sure I had one, guys.

[00:17:21]Fish on. Fish on. Fish on. Fish on. Oh my gosh. We did it. We did it. We did it. Yes.

[00:17:32]Oh yeah.

[00:17:35]This is the one.

[00:17:39]All we had to do is add some weight and we got him. We got a little wild brown trout right here. These ones were born and raised in this river. They were introduced years ago. Super cool fish.

[00:17:51]First big pool. We got it done. Just going to get this fish out of here.

[00:17:56]Thank you, man.

[00:17:59]Sweet.

[00:18:01]And just like that, we've completed our trout. We got our stocked one. We got our wild one. That easy. Now we can move on to our last species, which is the largemouth bass. Here's our canal. Now, like I said, I know this is a no no canal, but the fish are wild, believe it or not.

[00:18:21]So, we have a chance at a wild largemouth bass in here. What not a better bait to use for a bass than a little craw. This is Drew's bait company, Adaptive Baits.

[00:18:33]So, this is the AB craw in green pumpkin.

[00:18:37]We're going to see if we can get ourselves an LMB today. I can see a carp under the bridge. That's not going to do us any good, though. Now, I know I'm going to get some questions asking how are these bass possibly wild. They are in the city limits. The canal system here in Arizona starts at the Salt River, and the Stalt River comes from a giant reservoir up above. So, the only fish that are actually stocked in the canals here are grass carp. Everything else has worked its way all the way through the canal system and is completely wild.

[00:19:07]Right in there. That pocket maybe. Oh, I think that was a bite. Oh, we have him. He came out here. Oh my gosh, guys.

[00:19:17]Oh my gosh. He thumped it, dude. He thumped it and came out here.

[00:19:23]Oh my gosh. Literally fifth cast.

[00:19:26]Literally fifth cast. Look how easy that was. Now, I know you won't believe me, but these fish are absolutely wild. They worked their way into the canal systems one way or another and they have ended up here basically in the city limits.

[00:19:40]Pretty crazy if I do say so myself.

[00:19:42]>> Now, we were supposed to target the wild carp after this, but a trip to catch something cooler came up and I figured we would target this fish instead, the flathead catfish. So, me, my dad, and Porter headed out to Lake Havasu to see if we could catch one of these elusive fish. And let's just say something crazy happened.

[00:19:59]Okay, well, this is a trick as old as time. And we're going to be using worms, live worms, and a bobber to catch our bait. These flathead really, really like to eat pan fish, specifically like bluegill hybrids. If if we catch a Oh, a tree like Porter. We don't catch bait, we don't get to fish tonight. So, we're going to get stacking them up. Dad's already got one. I'm going to get a worm on and uh see if we can get one in the live well, baby. Let's go. Yeah. Sorry.

[00:20:27]>> I know. I just don't want to limit my audience to Arizona and I feel like that's a step in that direction. So, I was like I just decided against it. They can still find useful information on my page though. I promise.

[00:20:44]All right, here we go. First cast with the worm.

[00:20:47]We're looking at these hulies here because this is where the the pan fish like to hide. So, >> let's see if we can do it.

[00:20:58]Oh, there we go. I guess he just had it the whole time.

[00:21:02]>> Okay, my first fish of the trip. I think it's a red ear bass.

[00:21:06]>> It's a swany bass, dude.

[00:21:08]>> It's a perfect size red ear. This is exactly what we're looking for, guys.

[00:21:12]Preferably not gut hooked, though.

[00:21:15]This is a little redear sunfish. These make amazing flathead bait, specifically ones this size. So, we're going to keep stacking these up. Put them in the live well. And uh we need plenty in there.

[00:21:28]Let's fill this up a little more.

[00:21:29]Actually, here we go. Cast number two.

[00:21:33]>> Oh, that's money. This is a fish for sure.

[00:21:38]It's probably already on. Yep. Bingo.

[00:21:40]Come on, man. Come on now, baby. Come on now, baby. Didn't I say that was going to be a fish?

[00:21:47]>> We got a nice little red ear up here, guys. Let's go.

[00:21:50]This is my first pass.

[00:21:52]>> I was like right up against the tulies, too.

[00:21:56]>> There's another. We're going to keep loading them up. I don't know how much of this bait fishing I'm going to show, guys, cuz you know, we want to we want to keep the video diverse, but I'll show you a little bit of it. We're going to do some bass fishing, too.

[00:22:09]After loading up on bait for the rest of the day, we found a nice spot to camp and decided to run some lines out.

[00:22:14]There's a very intricate process to do this, so I'm going to show you guys how we do that right now. It is time. We're about to get our first baits out for these monster flathead. This has been an awesome day, but it's showtime. We're rocking some very heavyduty rods and reels today. This is the Pen Fathom 2.

[00:22:33]This is 120 lb braid. Now, hold on. Hold on. I know this is a little overkill, but there are some big trees, big boulders, and all kinds of structure in here that we could potentially break off a fish of a lifetime on. So, we want to be prepared for that. I would rather be overkill than lose fish. We have a three-way swivel. We have a like 130 lb mono leader. And I believe this is an 8 octopus hook by Gamagatu. And then we got a bobber here. So the idea with this is after we run out our bait, that weight sinks to the bottom. And this bobber is going to float our bait off the bottom out of the rocks because you want the bait visible for the fish to come up. And flathead generally feed up.

[00:23:17]They come up and they suck in your bait.

[00:23:19]So, that is what we're rocking tonight.

[00:23:21]We have a bait boat. So, the way this works is we attach our line via a little anchor on the back and we run this out.

[00:23:30]We have a little fish finder connected to this as well, so we know exactly the depth we're dropping our bait in. It sounds complicated, but it's really not.

[00:23:38]It's actually a lot of fun, and it really helps your hookup ratio and finding like where the fish are at and the correct depths and everything. Oh, this one is actually sitting in the net for me right here. So, maybe we start with him, eh? He's a little bit smaller.

[00:23:52]What about this one? Oh god.

[00:23:56]Oh my gosh. They're still lively. We got a little red here, I believe, to start.

[00:24:00]We're a hybrid. Can't tell, but that is what we're going to begin with. It's ready.

[00:24:05]>> Solid. We got a little net, too. Oh, I'm so excited, guys. We're going to go ahead and take this hook.

[00:24:12]We're gonna get it right the back of the oh oh back of the dorsal. We're gonna come down and come up just like that at an angle. And that hook point should be in the perfect position for a bait to get absolutely munched. And hopefully we hook the fish.

[00:24:33]We're going to go ahead and free spool these. Here we go, guys. You've been waiting for this and so have I. So, let's do it. Here we go. First bait of the night, guys.

[00:24:47]I think we might shoot for like 25ish feet. We got the fish finder on right here so we can see the exact depth. This is where things get very, very interesting.

[00:25:03]I mean, I fish with the glow-in-the-dark bobber. That was cool enough. So that's one thing I think would work good here if I like live lined a big ass bluegill.

[00:25:13]>> Seeing it all the way out there.

[00:25:14]>> That's what I'm saying. We live lined a bluegill out there and put it on mega bobber and then put a glow stick on it and put it like 20. Oh god.

[00:25:28]Got him. Got him. Got him. Got him. Got him. Guys, guys, run.

[00:25:36]Oh god, he's in that. He's in that >> But it is a flathead. It is the target species.

[00:25:44]And we got him.

[00:25:46]>> Right in the corner of the mouth. Oh, that's awesome, guys. Let's go. He absolutely slammed that thing. We let him eat it and that was it. There we go.

[00:25:56]That's freaking awesome. Sweet.