Mississippi River Pool 1 Catfish

It was a chilly afternoon, the wind was blowing at a steady pace from the southeast, the clouds looked like they could add some rain to the already chilly temps of 40 degrees, it didn’t make a difference, it was time to go fishing!

I was joined by MNfishHUNT(Mike) for a couple hours this afternoon for a quick trip to try to catch a couple fish, and to get a little pre-fishing for the April Fools Cat Gathering coming this Saturday, April 5th. We didn’t have very high expectations with the cold weather and recent snowfall melting and dropping down the water temperatures.

As we expected, the fishing started a bit on the slow side, It took about 30 minutes to finally connect with our 1st fish which was a chunky 26″ channel cat willing to grab my recently thawed chunk of shad on a 1/0 Gamakatsu Circle hook. The bite slowly picked up and the bites became more frequent. In 2 hours fishing, we managed to catch 7 channel cats ranging from 16″ – 28″.

Our technique was simple, we did what we had to do for early season, cold water cats. We found where the fish were located, found a bait they were willing to work with, and kept our lines in very close proximity to the fish and the bite greatly improved.

Rods: 8 1/2″ spinning gear (St Croix Tidemaster & Cabelas King Cat)

Reels: Okuma Epixor(Salt Striker), and another Okuma 30 model on St Croix

Line: 20# – 50# Power pro (Yellow and Red Used)

Hooks: 1/0 Gamakatsu Circle hooks on 14″ leader

Weight: 1oz – 2oz Bank sinkers

Bait: Shad(Large Frozen Fresh) 1/4″ X 1 1/2″ chunk

For anyone interested in Catching some of these fish themselves, come on down to the April Fools Cat Gathering this coming Saturday April 5th! The weather looks good and its sure to be a good time!