Lake McConaughy, Nebraska catfishing report

Lake McConaughy may be tough for walleyes right now, but if you want catfish, it’s the place to be! My friend Jim Mosely, who I fished the King Kat tourny with a few years ago at Milford Res in Kansas, called and needed a partner for the Central Nebraska Cat tournament this past weekend at Lake McConaughy, and I’m glad he did. He was able to get a little time in on Friday to see if he could find some fish, which was a real help. With that plan, we set out Saturday morning to catch some fish.

Our plan was to river fish. Lake McConaughy is really up the last couple of years with all the water coming into the lake. We were fishing in areas that have been dry for numerous years now, so it was a regular jungle back there. We drove up the North Platte river about as far as we could, and found a couple spots that were better than others, as the pictures show. The farther you went upstream, the stiffer the current. This is a new thing to a lot of us here in central Nebraska, because we just don’t have rivers here we can put boats on. We have the Tri County canal, but it’s just not the same. The Platte is known for being a mile wide and inch deep, but this isn’t the case right now.

Finding cuts in the bends of the river channels was one of the keys for us. You might find an area that was 6′ deep, and that’s where the cats seemed to be. If you could find any kind of current break, that was even better. We didn’t catch any cats real early, but after about 9am, as the water temp warmed, so did the action. There were numerous times when we’d throw one rod, try to get the other rod ready, and look up to see the 1st rod doubled over. The best bait for us was cut shad, the cats just seemed to love it. I’d say we caught about 25 fish all day, and who knows how many we missed. We moved around a lot all day long, and I think that was the 2nd big key for us. This was a tournament where laziness killed.

We ended up weighing our 5 best fish for 36.4 lbs, which was good enough to win the tournament. 2nd was 29.7 lbs, and I believe that team had big fish as well. We thought our 9 pounder, above, would hold up. They brought in one that went, if you can believe this, 9.2! The cat that Jim is holding is the blackest channel cat I’ve ever seen. I imagine with all that dirty water and places to hide, maybe he was just coming up out of the muck.

We didn’t have the turnout we were expecting, but it was still a great time. There were guys out drifting the main lake, and they were catching fish, but we found the better quality fish up the river. A variety of baits were catching fish, but some were better than others. The higher water has made walleye fishing tough to say the least. Outside of the spawn, it’s been a tough bite for the eyes. As for catfish…they can be found about everywhere. No better time to go for cats at Big Mac than right now, so get out there and enjoy the beaches, but don’t forget about the cats!