FPH 9/15

I spent Saturday scouting new areas and trying new (to me) techniques. It was a beautiful mostly cloudy and 0-5mph ESE wind day. I�ve been catching my shad along the riprap banks adjacent to the main creek channel in the mornings. The past few times I have been in that area I have seen fish relating to the area where the riprap meets the mud bottom, about 30-32�. Given the conditions of the day, I decided to use my trolling motor nd drop baits straight down to them. After an hour of working the area with no bites, I decided to move on. I didn�t give up on the technique though. I ran around open water following the main channel looking for bait/fish on the sonar. Finally found a school of something right on the channel ledge, mostly hugging near the bottom. I suspected it to be a school of white bass or small catfish. I got spotlocked just on the edge of the school and sent baits straight down, suspended 1-3� off bottom. It ended up being fairly steady action and got 5 fish in the boat within a couple hours before heading in to start on the honey-do list

Gotta love that bite when your rod is in that 0 degree position....

It was a blast. I�ll be trying more of it when the conditions allow.

Nice!

Great day!

Cool double fish pic John...

Thanks Chris. How�d your salt trip go??

We got rained on the whole trip except about 3 or 4 hrs. We still had a great time in spite of Mother Nature. Didn�t get to fish as much as we planned but my 2 1/2 yr old boy reeled in his first fish and it was a blast watching him crank it in and drag it up onto shore. Can�t post pics from my new phone or I would have made a post.

Thanks Curtis! that reel got smoked by the sand when we took that pic! Well worth it!!!

Awesome! He looks to be having a blast!!

Solid post and fish. Good job.

Those are some nice blue cats man! I've never done much good rod and reel fishing for blues out there (rarely have tried though) but have done decent in fall jugging several years back. Caught several blues in the double digits and a few up around 30 pounds in the area marked on the map. Seemed like around December the pattern changed and apparently people do pretty good drifting/dragging near the dam in winter. Every other time of the year I tried jugging it seemed like I always caught baby blue catfish for whatever reason....for that reason I usually jug kirby if I want a mess of decent sized blue catfish. Some pretty big fish have come out of kirby in recent years up to 40 plus pounds.

Haha!!!...Man that pic is to cute EG!!!
Nice Haul J Lowe...Ever since I bought my ulterra I have always wondered about dropping baits straight down and hitting spotlock in the middle or near a large grouping of cats.....Thanks for the confirmation Sir!!

Yep, that�s a good area depending on the time of year. I like dragging baits around there.



Only way to know for sure is to try! Lol. I was not very confident in it before this as I have tried it some before, but I believe it has its time and place.

Good day for sure

It is definitely catfish time on FPH you cant troll for hybrids without catching them. I even snagged a yellow last year at this time.

One thing I have done is spot lock over the hybrids or catfish and put my live shad down to where I see them and then get four or five extra shad and cut them up in small pieces. This can be very effective in drawing the fish in under your boat. Once I hook one I like to play it very slowly so it thrashes and fights as much as possible without tangling up. This seems to fire the other fish up too : )