Questioni've been fishing a local river for cat from the bank and by boat for the past few months with only one small cat caught. I've used chicken liver, nite crawlers, minnows, and live blue gill, still with no luck. I've fished in differnt moons and times of day in different types of weather at different water levels with different. I've seen cats come out of this river, but nothing seems to work. What in the world is goin on? I've used bank lines and jugs and still no luck any advice?
AnswerRon; Are you sure there is a good population of catfish in the river? I can only assume from your question that some people are catchin some catfish.
Next are you fishing on or near the bottom? If the river has much current you will need enough weight to keep your bait near bottom since most catfish are bottom feeders.
Now are you fishing near cover. By cover I mean an area where a fallen tree, a large rock, a sharp bend or something else breaks the current? Catfish do not ordinarily stay in a fast current but wait in a current break. Usually downstream from a large tree or rock there is often a swept out hole where cats love to wait for a meal.
The baits you are using are fine and should catch catfish, but must be fished where the cats are.
I have had best luck tieing to a tree or from bank getting right down to the water beneath a big fallen tree and casting down into the area where the water is moving opposite to the river current. This is called an eddy and is a good place for cats.
Another thing about catfish, for the most part they are nocternal that is feed at night. I have had my best luck just before dark until an hour or two after dark.
Another thing that you can try is to look for feeder creeks into the main river. These during ordinary times will be good around the mouth and a little ways up the creek. If you happen to be lucky enough to be ready with a big can of night crawlers on a day when a sudden spring or summer rain raises the creek to bank full or more you can sometimes have a real ball. When I was younger, I lived near a lake with several small creeks feeding into it. When we would have one of those toad stranglers in early summer I would grab my rod and a bucket of worms and a gunny sack and head for the creek. I had fished the creek many times when it was down at normal level so I knew exactly where the creek bank was located by certain trees. When the water was up I would wade across the overflow in the pasture and woods to the trees I knew. I would then toss my gob of night crawlers into the current and in just a few minutes a channel cat would grab it. That was what the gunny sack was for. At times I could hardly carry the gunny sack home.
I also found out that the fish would be biting quite well and then the moon would appear above the tree tops. It did not have to be much moon but a full moon was the worst. As soon as the moonlight hit the water that was the end of the fish biting. We always caught fish on these kinds of situations. I don't remember ever failing.
Another time my brother and I decided to go to the creek that we had fished as kids just for the heck of it. We had never caught more than a few catfish from that creek but it was our boyhood creek and we went back after many years just for naustalgia. When we got there there had been a downpour that afternoon and the creek was half mile out of banks. We decided to go ahead and see what we could catch. We got there an hour or so before dark and waded across a corn field that had been just recently planted and was now underwater. Right on the creek bank was a huge maple tree with a mound around it. It was a small island and we set up on it.
We had night crawlers and began to fish.
Right away we started catching catfish and during the night as the creek fell back into it's banks we caught a gunny sack full of catfish and had lost many more.
I had no idea that there were that many catfish in that creek.
If you are fishing from a boat and are allowed to use jugs(they are illegal here)
as you mentioned be sure you put enough weight on the line to keep it near the bottom. Of course if you let it hit bottom your line will snag. This isn't always a bad thing if the snag isn't too large. Often times such a snag will hold the bait near to some cover and catfish will come to the bait. I have never used jugs like that so I am far from expert at it.
I have caught fish on what we called a "trot line" Not "trout line". This is a main line with dropper lines with hooks on them. My uncles used to fish the Ohio River from the south part of Indiana using trot lines a mile long with 1000 hooks. They had commercial licence and sold the fish. This was over half century ago. I don't know if one could even eat the fish from the Ohio river today. Anyway they would put the line out first by tieing one end to a heavy stone. They used one about 200lbs. They then pulled the line tight using the boat motor and tied the other end to a huge stone which was dropped over making the line very tight. They had a line tied to the middle of that line and then pulled the middle up and began tieing the droppers using knots that could be easily untied. If I remember it was a clove hitch they used. When running the line and they came to a hook with a fish on it they simply untied the line, threw the fish in the box and tied on a new baited hook. They baited the hooks with cut bait seigned from a small pond. After baiting from the middle of the main line to as close as possible to the big stone they went back to the center and did the other half. They ran the line morning and night and caught many good catfish. Of course you likely wold not want a trot line a mile long with 1000 hooks but one a hundred yards with 50 hooks will catch fish in most any river. Check laws in your state as number of hooks allowed varies.
Set the line diagonally with one end a bit upstream of the other.
My favorite way of catching catfish is sitting on the bank with a couple of rods and reels set up with fork branches as rod holders, a couple of friends to drink cola or beer with while waiting for the cats to bite. Sometimes they do sometimes they don't but who cares. My friends and I can talk about the times when we were kids on the old creek bank waiting for that monster cat we knew was in that hole to bite. There is always more to fishing than catching fish although I will admit cathing some sometimes helps a lot.
I guess to sum up you need to get your bait, whatever it is, down to where the fish are. They are not always in the first downed tree or big rock you try. You may have to hunt for their hiding place but if they are there and you put a bait in front of them you will catch some of them. Don't give up.
I have by necessity been very general in this answer. If you have more specific information to give me about your river, its depths, its cover and structured maybe I can be more specific with my answers.
I hope this has not bored you to death with my fish stories but this is the best way I know of explaining what I mean about catching cats in different circumstances.
Thank you for calling on me to answer your question. I hope it is of some use and I hope you begin catching some big ones.
I really would like to know how you came out with your catfishing. If you start catching some give me an e-mail and tell me about it. If you do not catch some soon give me an e-mail and let me know specifically how you have tried and maybe I can solve the problem more specifically.
I am
Jack L. Gaither
[email protected]
