After a great Turkey Day I spent the rest of my vacation hunting for big cats in Lake Livingston. My dad and I set out 5 jugs in the White Rock Creek channels in depths ranging from 16ft to 22ft. The shallower jugs did not produce very well... just a few dinks. The 2 jugs we had in the 22ft water produced 2 nice blue cats, one 15 pounder and one 6 pounder.

While waiting for the jugs to produce, I decided to try some rod & reel action and caught my new personal best on R&R, this 13 pound Blue cat:



After the pic I released her back to the water healthy. That was a really fun 5 minute fight and the hook fell right out as my dad got her in the net.

The weather turned nasty and we were blown off the lake by noon. All bait used on the jugs and rod & reel were cut shad. I've found that cutting the tails completely off and then making cuts along the shad makes for better catches of quality cats. Leaving the tails on the shad seems to attract dinks all day to pick at the bait.

Congrats on the PB, you got the right idea on the shad. I usually cut the tail off and then put a slit in the belly and poke a hole just under the gills where the body meets to get the blood flowing. Great day!

Congratulations on your new PB . Nice kitty. If I fish shad live, I just snip the tail to where it just slightly bleeds, my thoughts are it keeps them alive slightly longer and they're giving off two signals to the kittys, blood, and injured bait fish.

Nice job!!!

thats a nice fish. i have alot of respect for that lake.i almost sinked my old boat there. i never knew a lake could get so choppy so fast.if it wasnt for that island we would of not made it. anyway im going to get down there and do some fishing below the dam. i miss them day i use to fish there ever weekend.

Awesome fish, Congrats.

Nice catch! I think I can see my house! I live in the back ground there of you pic, thats funny to see.

Very nice.......Congratulations!

Hehe, I was shocked at how large the waves were and how much power there was behind them. The first attempt to reclaim the jugs failed because we had too many people on the boat (family up for the weekend). I then went back out by myself but I made sure I had the motor kill-switch attached and 4 life jackets lying loose around the boat, plus one I was wearing.

The big deal was trying to approach each jug using the main boat motor and gauging the angle correctly so I can quickly grab each one. The waves were too powerful for the trolling motor. The jug this big girl was on tried to run as I approached it... so it took three tries to get my hands on it.

Great story to bore my future kids with

hi Tom ! good to see your doing some fishing.....I hope that you !

Way to go on the new PB! Congrats