Just before the 4AM alarm sounded the eyes opened and the ears detected rain on the metal roof. Perfect timing, the feet hit the floor making a dash to start the coffee pot. With the coffee brewing a trip was made outside around the house and 30 some crawlers collected. All this and only 15minutes had past, funny how slow time moves when you are anticipating a good time on the water and just want to get there.
This Saturday was going to be a hunt for the bottom dwelling barbel faced finned critters not knowing what to expect. It has been awhile since Mike and I have played this game and we both were looking forward to knockin’ the rust off our tackle and ability to find some Channel cats with the possibility of doing battle with a Sturgeon.
Armed with 2/0 and 3/0 wide gap circle hooks, 3-4oz no roll sinkers, crawlers and suckers we were set up in the tail waters at the dam bright and early anticipating some big thumps on the heavy rods. Long story short, we never found any big bruisers to dance with but we did fine where the average sized channel cats were hanging.
Set up in current seams on the down side tip of wing dams produced active fish. Anchored in 20fow and dropping baits over the boat side in the seam found targets providing us some action. The bite we experienced was not that heart stopping thud on the pole but more of an easy pick up and then a slow run. The technique used for best hook up percentage was to feed out some line letting the fish run a ways with the bait, then stop the line while the rod loaded up causing the circle hook to find its mark. Trying to connect to soon produced a lot of missed fish.
The only down fall I find with the circle hook is while using a 3/0 and catching smaller fish, a lot of these poor guys take the hook in the eye. The smaller size of the 2/0 helps prevent this and still holds and performs with authority while catching channel cats. I sure would have loved to had the opportunity to test out the 2/0 on a hosed lipped sturgeon but it wasn’t to be on this trip.
Both crawlers and cut suckers were being picked up with the cut bait producing the nicer sized fish. Before we knew it our allotted time for being on the water was coming to a close, man does time fly when you are on the water.
We found the water temp to be a little better than 50 degrees. No loch ness monster this time but as the water temps keep climbing the odds are going too be getting better. I’d like to think there will be more time on the water this year than the past chasing the cats, it sure was a fun start and it’s only the end of March.
