After two great days/nights of cat fishing up stream of Everts Resort, I woke up to my truck being taped off with “crime scene” tape. Apparently someone got the word the channel cat fishing is criminal again!
Friday evening I found myself meeting up with Jesse Krook and Tim Miller at the Bluffs for dinner. I figured one of the two of them would buy me dinner, but it wasn’t in the cards that night. I hoped fishing would be better. Off to the river.
Jesse and I made it to our first location about 8 pm.
Using the quality products from Team Catfish, it was easy to get the tussling channels to start biting.
It’s always a good time fishing with the Krook! He’s so inspiring to me.
I did draw the line when he handed me the fourth Team Catfish Floating Fish Grip though.
Seldom do we get back to the resort this early and we saw the campfires flickering on the way back to the dock. Jesse headed for home and I headed for the up stream campfire to see what was going on there. Brett King and his FW Elaine were enjoying the flickering warmth of Master Campfire Builder Kerry Harvey’s fire.
While I was teaching Brett all I know about walleye fishing…
Kerry dosed off.
Saturday evening was much more serious. Colbey and Dustin came up from MO to do some fishing. They did some bank fishing earlier in the day on Pool 2 then met up with me at 7pm.
The bite started off with quality size sheephead coming to the boat…if there is such a thing. Then around 8 pm it was constant action for around two hours. Never knew if it was going to be a sheepie or a channel until the fight started and could feel the fish on the I-Cat rods.
We had a number in the double digits, with the largest coming in later at 13 pounds. Very few smaller size channels tonight with the littlest guy coming in at just over 4 on the digital.
Between the rod bending action of the sheepies and the channels, we lost count of fish caught. I feel comfortable is saying it was in the twenty’s for the cats.
Around Midnight the bite slowed some and I thought the NW wind had died a bit so we made a move. Anchoring down stream some, we found the wind was still just too much. We could have tossed out another anchor, but none of use were totally acclimated to the drop in temps. We figured we would giver 10 minutes and move back to our original location that was out of the winds cold chill.
This time of year, it’s always a good idea to have at least one rod out with cut bait on it. The river being the river we never know what is going to pick up the bait.
In this case the rod directly in front of me started to bend over. Because we’re using the Team Catfish 3/0 Double Action hooks we don’t have to “set” the hook, just lift and take out the slack.
Well, I normally pick up this rod and hand it to the person behind me with one hand. This time the rod stopped before I could get it to Colbey and he needed to reach over me to get the rod!
Colbey had a good fight. This guy just didn’t want anything to do with our boat. It wasn’t coming up for nothing and I heard Colbey saying “come ON!” a number of times. I think he was getting tired. LOL!
Thirty five pounds of flathead did make it to the boat and it was knuckles all the way around.
Everts Pool 4 Personal Best Pins were awarded to both anglers at the end of the night.
Without the wind gusting to over 15 mph, it would have been a very comfortable night fishing. The clearing skys and the sliver of a moon coming up around 11 pm was pretty darn cool looking. The fish cooperating sure did make for a awesome night on the Ol’ Mississippi River!
Nice looking cats. Great report Brian.
Here’s a few more pics from Saturday evening.
I hate to ruin a good report with a rough fish up date…but I will.
The walleye bite is picking up some with the drop in water temps.
The best reports are still the down stream dragging with Draggon Jigs and half a crawler. The guys are saying find the current and you’ll find the fish. All that I talked with were fishing across from Everts and up stream although I didn’t see anyone fishing at the dam. ‘Course I may have miss folks in my night time adventures.
We did have one reporter out trolling cranks and he picked up a few on an orange fire color crank. If I was a walleye guy, I think I would be using more natural colors about now, but that’s just me and I don’t have any walleye pics to back up my claim.
What’s your favorite colors for walleye’s this time of year?
That triple picture is awesome, best pic of you yet!
Nice job! Looks like a lot of fun.
It was Justfish!
By the way, if anyone is in the market for a fisherman’s dream home, Scott Fairbairn has his house for sale in the classifies.
It’s located in the WI back channel with the BEST location to watch the boats go by. Dock fishing along with an awesome view!
Link to Classified<<
Great read and pics Mr. K
I have to admitt that the Sudden Impact and Secret-7 dip baits have me all fired up about fishing channle cats once again in my life
It was nice meeting you in person, Brian! We did OK, as you know, but it looks like we should have saved some energy for the night bite! We had a great time, and were treated great by Steve & Kari, and everyone else at the camp. We intend to make it back up. Maybe sometime you should come down to the Illinois River when it’s up in the trees in May(prespawn). Talk about a riot! Lots of catfish in the 2-10 lb. range. If you want to try them, we could circle the boat in a school of Asian carp for you. You’d probably be barred from the river if folks learned you’d been down here, though.lol Anyway, it’s nice to come up and have fun and be treated so well. And oh, yeah, catch fish too. Keep hammering them!
Barred from the river!? I would be banned from MN! LOL!
It was good to meet your group to and next time I’ll get over your way for some fish. Thanks for the invite though. Glad you had a good time.
That wind was a killer on Saturday, but there were a few places a person could stay low and out of it. We were lucky and the fish were hot at at least one of those locations.
Get back up soon! Just don’t bring any Silver Carp up…and I don’t care how good people say they taste! LOL!
That same night was the night I posted about in my own fishing report in the Cat-n-Sturg forum.
Seems like it was a good night on the entire river system!
It was fish on! again last night and friends fishing with friends!
Ol’ Pete at Everts was reporting a great channel bite during the daylight hours as well.
The flathead came from a break the started at 12 fow and dropped quickly into 50. The channels were pretty much all over as far as depths go. I’m keeping the sheephead tactics to myself!
Here’s Alex with the big fish of the evening.
Nice job Alex!
Saturday nite was a bit warmer with a slight wind that kept changing directions. After a little moving around, we ended up finding the channels in 27 feet of water.
Jack and Chris seemed to have a hoot!