Fisher-o-Men
Active member
My last report was probably 2 months old. I guess now that this one is 2 weeks old, I'm showing some improvement!
Actually, I was waiting on a young man of 13 to send me a pic of his oversized channel cat that he caught, but I decided I better go ahead and post.
We arrived on a Friday, June 2nd and Nickajack generation had dropped from 24K cfs on Thursday (that would have been awesome!) to 12K cfs on Friday (no generation until 1 pm). Saturday was worse with only 3K (one unit beginning at 1 pm). No love for the weekend anglers, I suppose...
As so many reports have already stated better than I could, the striper bite was slow to non-existent. We caught only 3 and none were large enough to be photo worthy. The drum fishing was slower than usual as well, although we caught about 20 nice ones in an hour late on Fri evening. The catfish did all they could to salvage the trip. I am a catfish amateur, but have a great deal of respect for these. One thing that I thought was neat was that we pulled off a "WhiskerFish Slam" on Friday evening, catching a small flathead and nice blue (although small by your standards!) to go along with a bushel of channels. I experimented with baits and caught cats on the following: bream head, cut threadfin, live threadfin, nightcrawlers, red wigglers, and skipjack guts (by the way, fresh skipjack guts work great but are about the most disgusting bait to use, especially removing them from a still struggling skipjack!) For those interested, threadfin, while not abundant, were present, and it only took a few castnet throws to have all we needed. The skipjack, mostly small, provided great fun for the young man with me. He caught two at a time most casts, and three at a time once (2 crappie jigs tied over a small spoon for weight).
Actually, I was waiting on a young man of 13 to send me a pic of his oversized channel cat that he caught, but I decided I better go ahead and post.
We arrived on a Friday, June 2nd and Nickajack generation had dropped from 24K cfs on Thursday (that would have been awesome!) to 12K cfs on Friday (no generation until 1 pm). Saturday was worse with only 3K (one unit beginning at 1 pm). No love for the weekend anglers, I suppose...
As so many reports have already stated better than I could, the striper bite was slow to non-existent. We caught only 3 and none were large enough to be photo worthy. The drum fishing was slower than usual as well, although we caught about 20 nice ones in an hour late on Fri evening. The catfish did all they could to salvage the trip. I am a catfish amateur, but have a great deal of respect for these. One thing that I thought was neat was that we pulled off a "WhiskerFish Slam" on Friday evening, catching a small flathead and nice blue (although small by your standards!) to go along with a bushel of channels. I experimented with baits and caught cats on the following: bream head, cut threadfin, live threadfin, nightcrawlers, red wigglers, and skipjack guts (by the way, fresh skipjack guts work great but are about the most disgusting bait to use, especially removing them from a still struggling skipjack!) For those interested, threadfin, while not abundant, were present, and it only took a few castnet throws to have all we needed. The skipjack, mostly small, provided great fun for the young man with me. He caught two at a time most casts, and three at a time once (2 crappie jigs tied over a small spoon for weight).
