Mississippi River Pool 8 Channel Cats

Wednesday 8/20/08 was one of the better nights after spending some time around the dam area a few trips before trying to put a pattern together, no double digit fish but my good friends Ed and Tom played tugawar with some bottom diggers The time spent looking for fish paid off and made for some excitement.
If you follow any of the Mississippi River catfish forum reports at all, you know it has been a tough year for me getting on big Channel Cats drifting ….the action this night made for a feel good

Neither Ed or Tom are new to fishing by any means, but it was only Ed’s second time and Tom’s first with this technique.. It never fails, the first thing said…”It’s hard to believe the set up stays at the bottom”. A 24inch mono 14lb leader tied to a 1/0 Barrel swivel (or smaller) then attached to a 1/0 Snap swivel tied to the main line (I like 10-20lb Power Pro) with a 1/0 – 2/0 (depending on the size of my fillet) Daiichi Catfish Wide circle hook tied to the business end, it is all it takes to stay at the bottom and hook up with quality fish. Any favorite medium walleye rod will do, the lighter gear makes for some forearm clinching catching of channel cats

The cut bait of choice were gills to be filleted caught off a wing dam, form there we ran towards the dam. Are target while drifting; two wing dam tips, a clam bed, and a shelf of rubble, the producers were the clam bed and rubble. While making slight adjustment to the drift line we noticed more bites staying in 10-15fow but once we would drift the break into 20-25fow the fish were a little more on the healthy side With that said, thinking the fish might even get bigger farther from the channel ledge I pulled away covering out into the channel only to be fishing in the dead sea.

Tricks to remember, when you get thumped the first time drop your rod tip back, if the cat grabbed your bait the rod will load up making for game time. Setting the hook will only cause a missed fish. Keeping you drag just on the light side is good, I have seen very few gut hooked fish using a circle hook but have seen many hooked by the skin of there teeth, if the drag is to tight it will pull free 98 percent of the time.
Ed was the stick of the night landing 5 or 6 cats. Tom came in with a solid 2nd place finish! Myself……..my stomach still hurts from laughing ….yep, I blanked Seeing good friends on fish was all the excitement I could handle for the night Great job Ed and Tom, we will have to do that agian

Good luck fishing people!