Summer Time Trot Line Fun

My kids like to check the trot line when we stay at my parent’s place on the backwaters of Pool 12 in Iowa/Illinios. It’s legal to run a sport trot line there. I think you’re allowed 20 or 25 hooks. I asked my son what he likes about running the trot line and he said you don’t have to do the boring part. When I asked what’s that, he said, “Waiting for bites.” My daughter likes it too. It’s exiciting for them to feel the tug of a tug of the fish and see the water swirl. I have a couple of people who really enjoy a fresh meal of catfish and are happy to receive some nice, skinned cats. Mostly we catch sheepshead and channel cats.

Here’s some photos. Okay, I admit, I’m ready for summer, or at least not this weather.

Trot line are a riot and with circle hooks you can release those too big for eating a lot easier.
Grew up doing this on the Cedar river in Iowa.

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Trot line are a riot and with circle hooks you can release those too big for eating a lot easier.

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We experimented with circle hooks vs. J-hooks last summer and found perhaps a slight improvement in catch rates with the circle hooks. Our “experiment” was not “statistically significant”. We gut hook very few cats with the J hooks. Once in awhile we’ll gut hook a sheepshead but not very often a cat.

Last summer we tried an experiment baiting every other hook with a crawler or a small shad but I would forget what bait was on the first hook when we checked it, and I’d also lose count of what hook we were on when we did catch one … odd or even…so I don’t know what bait worked best. This was Labor day weekend. From what I could tell, both baits worked about equally well.

Boone

Soured clam,crawfish,ripe suckers and leopard frogs.stayed away from crawlers because we didn’t want to get the carp,or sheephead unless we needed bait.

That looks like fun!

I used to live in Kansas a long time ago. They would sell feeder goldfish in the baitshops. That’s what we’d usually bait trotlines with.

Stuart, last year I tried bait shrimp on my trotlines and ditty poles and with a sharp no. 1 hook I had a 99% hookup rate. I had a hard time finding smaller bluegills so went to baitshrimp. I’m going to try a couple diffrent spots this year too see if it was just the bite in those other areas so I can get a better idea on shrimp. I’ve used it for years on my regular fishing poles and always caught fish. Fishing dittypoles last year we fished a local creek when the water went up and in an hour and a half we caught 32 catfish and up to around 10 pounds. We had 10 poles out, our limit, and all we did was use the trolling motor to go up and down the creek and take fish off and then rebait, we didn’t sit and fish with our poles because we were too busy with the dittypoles. Shrimps also a good bait.