High Water Channel Cats of Pool 4

Bassman Joe and his friend Gregg Schilling both of Litchfield, MN picked the perfect night for wrestling in a few catfish!

It was towards the end of our night when Joe yells “there’s one!” and reaches over to the rod behind me. Picks up the rod and it’s FISH ON! With the flow going from last weeks 19,000 cfs to tonights 34,000 fps even a small channel cat would fight hard!

Then the bass guy says to me, “get the net” as the 12 pounder shows himself and raises a commotion on the surface.

The actions was constant all night with only a couple slow times. About the time we would say “they quit” the next rod would have a fish on. Just enough time to get a fishing “story” in before the next bite!

Cut bait was the ticket tonight as it has for the last several outings. The terminal tackle was the standard 4 oz no-roll sinker, 100 lbs test swivel and a 4/0 Gamakatsu circle hook with the barb bend down for easy hook removal.

We had a few weeds come through but it didn’t seem as much as there has been over the past month or so.

The question of “where do you fish” when the TV and Radio stations are covering the flooding of our rivers every 1/2 hour?

The answer: Same place as you would normally fish. The current seams. It’s just that the seams have moved in closer to shore.

Back in the ’80’s I was reading up on trout fishing in smaller streams and rivers. One of the many things I picked up reading was many people think the middle of the river is the best place to find fish.

Not totally true.

Although there can be structure that holds fish in the middle and other exceptions, generally speaking most fish will be towards the sides of rivers swimming along the breaks looking for dinner. Using this thought process, we anchored where the faster tail out waters met slower water.

We caught fish there, but it was just a little slow. Moving around 75 feet over into even slower water prove to be the best anchor and we didn’t need to move for the rest of the night. Our slowest producing rod of the evening was the rod that was cast into the deeper water (around 25 fow)

Since it’s after Labor Day, almost hunting season for many and everyone is talking about the high water, we were the only boat fishing and besides a couple barges…the only guys out one the river. Not that Pool 4 is overly crowded anytime at night but we would normally see a couple boats out enjoying the fishery.

But I know of two guys that enjoyed the solitude and will be back again to experience the diversity of Pool 4 of the Mighty Mississippi!