Hey yall,

This is my first post!

My dad and I are going to go camping at Cedar Hill state park this Tuesday by the water. The plan is to throw out a bunch of lines as far as we can, and hope for the best. We are going to get some live minnows and maybe some fresh shrimp or chicken livers and put them on circle hooks tightlined on the bottom?

Any big cats in Joe Pool? Any advice?

Thanks Yall!
I'll try and get some pics if we have any luck.

Tried fishing off one of the floating docks at Loyd back in May. Got a bass, got a crapper, but didn't land a cat.

Good chance though that that was just me being a horrible angler. Other ladies down there in the evening caught a mess of crappie on cane poles and minnows... dead AND live ones. That was in the day use area down towards the camp loops for what it's worth.

We camped at CHSP for the 4th and it was a madhouse. Swimmers EVERYWHERE we wanted to fish, except the perch pond. So we pretty well just skipped fishing. Weird though was that when we did try near the marina and while swimming we saw TONS of dead/floating/disintegrating minnows floating along... ick. Hopefully you'll get some good ones out there. =D

JP in my experience has been pretty much a scaley fish lake. Not many fishermen on here that target catfish on JP. I'm within a couple of miles of it and have played around a little and can almost always catch a cooler full or legal size eater channel cats, but to me , not enough quality cats to even unload my boat this year.. Tooo many week-end warriors for me.. If you want cats for a fry, sour some grain and get you some SureShot from Decature.... You can catch all that you want to clean. Good Luck _N _ Tight Lines !

Don't waste you time trying to catch Shad,,,,,,, I spent about 6 hours last August and didn't even get enough for one evening of fishing. If you do, hope you had better luck than I did.

I'm still waiting for my chance to fish with the " KING " of Catfish ..... "Armycatfishfisher " , But I'm pretty sure that he is studying the calendar of the great "CATFISH LYNN" So that he will know just the perfect day ,time , and bait so that It will be a total learning experience for ME....... Some of these sneaky catfish have a calendar or they probably wouldn't know when they could sneak - out for a snack.. Good Luck to you on JP,,,Becafeful in this horrible heat..

Catfish are devilish tricky. I think it's the attitude, more than the whiskers, that has them named after felines. I picture them with little periscopes, disguised as turtle heads, peering up and waiting until I'm getting a drink, helping the kids with a line, etc before they'll creep up and steal my bait.

Snarky little devils.

Haha, I can't shake that visual now.

If your camping at Cedar Hill the camping loop closest to the dam goes out to a point in the lake. There used to be a dock there but i think it was gone last time I was there. Anyway, there's an old road bed and an old pond out from that point that holds some decent channel cat. Just cast out as far as you can. I've had decent luck from this spot when camping at Cedar Hill.