Sport fishing at Howard Marsh can produce largemouth bass, channel catfish, and bluegill, each with notable adaptations and habits. Largemouth bass are serious predators that use their mouth muscles to create a surge of water current powerful enough to take in large amounts of food, including other bass or sometimes ducklings. Channel catfish are scent feeders that use their barbels, or whiskers, to find prey, and as scaleless fish they rely on thick skin and an ability to readily slime for protection. In the clear, shallow waters, rows of picnic plate sized depressions in the marsh-bottom substrate, called reds, are made by spawning bluegill. A commercial fishery once operated here at Ward's canal, catching sturgeon that were harvested for their eggs and then sent east for caviar.