Is it a Big Cat or a Big Striper?

[engatty]

I was recently watching my depth finder while running over a hump in 30' of water. The hump was between an old creek channel and the river channel which is 68' in this area. I saw a big fish on the river side and a second big fish on the creek side. Both fish were BIG solid black echoes on my Garmin. Both echoes were distinct from the bottom.

I sat down on them with frozen skipjack. No hit. HHhmmmm. Were they stripers? Were they cats? Was it the bait? The current? Luck?

The hump was about 30'x60' in size and I had bait on both the creek and river sides for at least 15 minutes per side....and about 15 minutes on top of the hump, too. I kept the bait about a foot above the bottom.

Anybody care to reckon what didn't happen? Please don't hurt my feelings.

-Blue Hawg emoScratch

 

[CRAZYHORSE]

i'll guess both are cats. especially the deep one. sometimes 15 minutes just might not be enough.

just my guess, but they were probably at least 100 pounds each.emoPoke

crazyhorse

 

[Guest]

I hope it don't hurt your feelings Steve but they could also have been big paddlefish.emoScratch

 

[Cathooker]

Let's also not forget that there are some very large drum and carp in the river systems of Tn. The sad thing is even tho we can mark big fish with the sonar we just can't make em bite if they ain't in the mood.

 

[SpurHunter]

Lets not forget also about the sturgen! Could be...maybe?...

 

[craazyboutbass]

Maybe it was a 100lb. largemouth... nah!

At Parksville when I'm fishing off points my fishfinder shows big solid black echoes meaning very large fish, this will pop up on the finder when I run into 30-40ft water mostly, but I've had it show this a few times in 15ft or less water. I never try for them, but what species to you think this is, or could it be beavers or otters? We've seen many of them in the past.

Bassfisher17 also told me that he heard that divers in the lake have spotted really large catfish. (he told me that the catfish were big enough to eat an average sized man!!) I don't know if it is true or not, so has anyone else heard this.

 

[hoggerhead]

crazyboutthebass, ive heard that one everywhere ive been, and im sure everyone else has too. You've probably heard the one about the catfish being as big as a volkswagon to havent you? They could exsist, but i think thats an old fishermans tale.

 

[shsimons]

Yeah, I have people tell me about 1,000 lb catfish and stuff that people see while diving.

a 70-80 lb catfish looks huge I'm sure if you've never seen one up close

 

[craazyboutbass]

Well, I'm pretty much just wondering if they are big ol cats that are popping up on my finder or not. All I really know about catfish in Parksville is that there are channel cats becuase they stocked some in there in 1999 or sometime around then, and I've read 2 reports on here about catching some nice flatheads by hand...emoScratch

Well I guess I'm getting a tad off subject talking about Parksville!! Sorry engantty, ya'll go on...

 

[drumking]

engatty - 9/4/2007 9:06 PM

I was recently watching my depth finder while running over a hump in 30' of water. The hump was between an old creek channel and the river channel which is 68' in this area. I saw a big fish on the river side and a second big fish on the creek side. Both fish were BIG solid black echoes on my Garmin. Both echoes were distinct from the bottom.

I sat down on them with frozen skipjack. No hit. HHhmmmm. Were they stripers? Were they cats? Was it the bait? The current? Luck?

The hump was about 30'x60' in size and I had bait on both the creek and river sides for at least 15 minutes per side....and about 15 minutes on top of the hump, too. I kept the bait about a foot above the bottom.

Anybody care to reckon what didn't happen? Please don't hurt my feelings.

-Blue Hawg emoScratch

There is no telling what the fish were, but a possible reason that they didn't bite your bait is because you were fishing between feeding periods. I don't espouse to the theory that fish bite constantly if you present the lure correctly. These fish might have just pigged out a couple of hours before and were snoozing it off.
I have spotted fish on my graph when I was catfishing and couldn't buy a strike for a couple of hours or so. Then when I began to get bit I hustled back to the spot where I saw the fish earlier and the fish would nearly take the rod away from you. Why didn't they bite before when I was using the exact same bait? One of the mysteries that keeps us coming back for more and trying to figure out what makes these critters tick. emoBigsmile emoGeezer

 

[minner]

With you describing such an area I would tend to believe these were probably (hopefully) catfish. I have had cats turn up their nose more than once at my presentations even though I knew they were down there (according to my sonar).

Was current running at the time you fished the hump?

 

[engatty]

Good ideas by all!! I especially liked the beaver/otter theory!! Could have been a set of Russian submarines, I suppose. (Wonder how they'd pull???)

No current was running, to my knowledge.

I guess I have no other conclusion but that they weren't hungry....at least for my frozen bait. Shucks, it tasted alright to me!

-Steve

 

[SpurHunter]

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[Guest]

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