Catfish cans

I used to fish in a good sized creek all the time as a kid. It was full of northerns, but had a bit of everything in it, including catfish. On summer day my buddy and I were wading down a shallower section and for the heck of it we pulled up an old cream can that was laying submerged in the shallows. I’ll never forget that first look in the can because I thought there was a wet car inner-tube inside, but no, it had a couple large catfish! We knew where there were more cans because the old shut-down creamery was just upstream and they either got tossed in the creek long ago, or got washed in by high water. Either way, every cream can we pulled up had at least one large catfish (relatively speaking) and some were also spilling eggs as we tipped them up. We kept a couple (which I now regret), but that was back in the early 70’s and we were just typical small town boys who discovered gold! After that first plunder we left them alone and I’m sure many, many little cats have, and still are getting their start in those submerged cream cans.

That is cool!

Good thread and good information .

I’ll bet a bag ‘o flathead cheeks that those cans were not in that creek by happenstance.
“Setting cans” – or oil drums or old water heaters, whatever – is an old outlaw river rat method of catching catfish during the spawn.
Place the cans in likely catfish spots, usually deeper bends in the creek, then “run your trap line,” tip up the cans and pull out the big cats that usually are busting with eggs.
Not sure if its legal, but its definitely not very ethical targeting the big spawners for easy filets.
We used to float fish a small stream for catfish in the summer, see the cans and stand them up on the open end or throw them up on the bank.

I guess some old timer had a “milk run”

There’s some videos of people doing this on Youtube down south somewhere. They used old tires. I’m pretty sure that would fall under the “no hand-fishing” law up here. At any rate, it’s not very sporting.

I don’t know about all that. There is an old abandoned creamery about a stone’s throw from the spot. I”m pretty sure these were flood washed. I grew up a block from this place…