Fishing

CrappieGuy and I hit the ice tonight at about 5 and we had 2 crappies flopping before we could each get 2 lines in the water. I was looking forward to one of those nights. Soon after we double on white bass just as the sun went down.

Next thing we knew both flashers starting light up like I’ve never seen before. Cats. We each landed a few 2-4 pounders and we realized that the panfish bite was off and the cat bite was ON.

I can’t explain how many fish were underneath of us all evening. We fished until 11 and there was almost never a moment where we weren’t marking fish. 80% of the time we were marking 3+ fish.

Zzzzzzzzzzz my drag goes and I’ve hooked a good one. 3 minutes later it measured to be a 25” cat. That was fun. I’ll post pictures later. Several others followed and then the mother cat herself grabbed ahold of my teardrop and waxie. CatfishHunter was 29” and a beauty of a channel cat. It took about 6 minutes to get it in with my 2lb test Berkley Vanish line and St. Croix Legend UL Rod. I can’t believe that line held up with all the runs this thing made with each one scraping my line again the bottom of the hole.

All in all, it was a great night of fishing and by far by bet cat fishing on hard water EVER. We managed 13 cats, 2 crappie, and about 5-7 silver bass.

We were fishing about 20 fow and most fish were 3-6 feet off the bottom (except the silver bass usually held tight to the bottom). Even the bigger cats were biting super light. Just a twitch of the spring bobber is all you had and then they were gone. I’m sure we missed over 20 bites and had 5 more on that we got half way up and they spit the hook.

A freshly recharged glow seemed to be the ticket. The best lure was a medium sized glow teardrop (white and pink). 2 waxies did the trick. I had a ton of bites on the #10 shrimpo, but I missed about 75% due to the small hook. I should have upsized, but didn’t.