The weather went south for the weekend, but the cats were still willing to bite in the mid day hours Saturday. I joined Ralph Wiggum and waste water guru on p2 saturday morning for a whatever is working type of day…
We quickly learned the walleyes were cooperating as well as WWG’s trolling motor. The wind was trying to push us upstream, the weak current trying to push us down.. we stayed in the middle and occasionally slid towards shore. It didnt work out, 107# of thrust just isnt enough with bad connections. Soon we relocated to another spot that looked promising with some baitfish activity and it soon payed off with great white bass action. We probably caught a total of 30 white bass with a couple getting into the 17″ range. RW had the hot stick, WWG would snag a shad about every 3rd cast, and myself.. the white bass would give me sympathy and give me a fish once in a while. The white bass bit for about 2 hours, when they let off we relocated to a deep hole outside of a small backwater. The fresh shad wwg snagged made great chunks of bait as it didnt take a minute for the bites to come. It took about 90 minutes to get 100 bites and probably a dozen cats into the boat(very hard to hook). All of the fish were in the 2 – 7 pound range, and wwg still got to show his special skills by snagging a sheephead and a decent channel cat in 30’+ of water on dead stick cut bait rigs.
It was pretty cold out, the wind had a bite to it. The river temp was reading at 40 degrees, the runoff that was holding the white bass was slightly warmer. The channel cats are stacked up in the deeper slow water, and are willing to bite if you get a bait in front of them.
I didnt have a camera on the outing… I will get another trip in soon and make an official report. 25 degrees and shad slime doesnt make for good camera conditions!