When you’re bank fishing, do you prefer a tight line or a little slack? And when using circle hooks, do you keep a tight drag or have it loose so they can run with it?

I can see at least half a dozen turtle heads at any one time.

Everyone gonna do things different, but I prefer to keep my lines tight as long as the wind will let me. I also keep my drags fairly tight. In other words, I don't want to readjust while fighting the fish. I use circle hooks almost exclusively unless using punch bait, so I let them set the hook on themselves by loading up the rods.

What have you been using for bait Tom? I bet there are some HUGE blue cats in that lake... The sunsets down there are amazing. If the water would come up 10 feet I think I could gain support for another trip down!

Doing a rain dance for yall!

I usually use fresh caught shad if I can get them, otherwise I use chicken breast. Most of the time all I can get are little threadfin shad. The other night I got lucky and got some gizzard shad.

I use four rods. Two lighter weight with smaller hooks and baits and two heavier with bigger hooks and baits. One of each are Carolina rigged and the other santee cooper rigged. 65# braid and 25# mono. What length of leaders do y’all use on these?

I think my biggest problem is water depth. I can’t get in deeper water where I’m fishing at. Well, that and turtles. I get a lot of real fast taps but no take downs. Anyone else experience bad fishing when there’s a bunch of turtles around?

Dan, I wish we would get a big jump in water. A 10 foot rise would still be less than the last time y’all came down I think. A 10 foot jump would give a lot of flooded grasses but a 20 foot jump would get a lot of new brush. Y’all are welcome down anytime!

Oh, happy birthday too!

I'm pretty blessed that I am only sorta bank fishing. I say sorta because I do most of my catfishing from a crappie house and can usually put my baits in water from 8 to 25 feet. I usually have the place to myself in the evenings. Like you I am running carolina rigs. I use my inshore medium to medium heavy rods, rods and reels are Tsunami, spooled with 25 or 30 pound test braid with either 15 or 20 pound fluoro leader. I do have two heavier rods I can throw out with larger baits rigged with 50 pound braid to a 25 to 30 pound mono leader. I know cats can't see so well I need fluoro for that reason, but the added stiffness helps to keep shad from twisting up the line on my lighter rods. My leaders are usually only 18 to 24 inches long and sometimes shorter with larger threadfins again to help prevent them from spinning up the line. Bait is usually live threadfin or bluegill. I don't use circle hooks, the wire on them seems awful big to me, instead I use Gamakatsu B10S hooks from #2 up to 2/0 sized to the bait I am using. Weights are from 1 to 3 oz, preferably "no roll". I also keep the line tight as it'll go; in the mid winter when the bite seems to go to cut/dead bait I'll leave a little slack. On live bait they seem to hit it at a pretty good clip and the tight line lets me see the takedown or the slack line if they hit heading towards me.

Here's a few from my last trip on the 3rd. A few for the grease and two oversized in the 12 to 15 pound range. I don't have a scale so anything over 28 inches goes back in the drink, unless its a yella. These were all caught on live perch anywhere from 2 to 6 inches long.




I have been using a lot of the advice from all of you guys on here and it really pays off. El Gato and Tim really helped out with picking my days. I now look for a fair amount of wind out of the North or South, and cooler temps. Not to mention I am really keyed into the new moon and a day or two either side of that. Wish I could get a boat on my lake as I think that would change the dynamic exponentially for larger fish when the weather really cools down.