Started out Saturday at 4AM, at the ‘spot’ on the Cedar and fishing by 4:40. Caught 8 nice channel cats by 7 (thus the 8×7). Changed spots a couple time and by 10 only caught two more (thus the 10×10). Home by 11 is self explainatory.
Had a great morning fishing. Used cut shad only. Had two doubles and it seemed like I had a rod going down all the time. Only missed one bite and one other fell off at the boat. Water was 6-12 feet deep with good current. Those factors seemed key. This river is so slow now you need to reel your line in to make current in most places. And if you don’t stay on plane, you won’t get back up.
The Mig flys were terrible…even though they don’t bite, they sure get in the way. Hard to breath with them guys all around. Right at dawn you could just hear the volume going up as more and more were hatching and flying.Bbzzzz, BBBZZZZ BBBBZZZZZZZZZ. Almost scarey. Anyway, I survived that and besides, I was too busy catching catfish.
Saw something on the way up there that I hadn’t seen for quite some time…fog on the water. The temp was awesome…had to wear a long sleeved shirt for a while. Water was 81…it had been in the 90’s all week. I think that slight rain we got the other night made a big difference in the activity level of the cats.
All of these fish were in really good shape. All had full, fat stomachs…no surprise when you consider all the dead fish floating down the river. Everything from suckers to catfish to walleyes. A lot of food for the undiscriminating channel cats.
Here’s some pic’s from the trip…
This is the biggest…11-13. Nice male
This was no. 2…7-15. Nice female (yea, that’s Buddy…and yea, he got a lot of cut shad off the cutting board when my back was turned).
BTW, I those two biggest were one of the doubles I had…man that is exciting to fight a big one (8pounder was first) While you’re watching your second pole bounce like crazy not knowing there’s a bigger fish on that one. Had to do some pretty fancy net work by myself.
Here is a pair of 6 pounders.
These are the remainder of the 8×7. 2-5 pounders. took these pic’s at 7AM, then released all back into the river…so I can catch them again.
After jumping around for a while in a couple other spots that have produced in the past…and getting skunked in them all (I think it was because there was vertually no current left and these spots were relatively shallow 3′-6′), I found one last spot that was deep (10FOW) and had good flow. Caught these last two and will be diner tonight. Maybe I’ll check back in with pics of the meal.
Here’s the last two (the 10×10)
Now I wanna know where these guys were last weekend?!?! Would have put me and my partner on the board and got us a couple more points at the Twisted Catfish Tournament Trail in Missouri. Oh well, maybe next time.
Hope you enjoyed the story and the pic’s. I know I enjoyed making the story happen.
L8R…Ken
