Has anyone ever tried this. What should i use, and where.[:)]
I watched a show on OLN a couple years ago where they were in Montana catchin’ kitties through a hole. I thought it would be a good idea, the meat surely has to be more firm. They were using live minnows.
does anyone have anymore tips, has anyone fished utah lake for big cats though the ice. maybe by the pumphouse the water is deep next to the house about 20ft or more.
I have caught channels and mudders through the ice at Utah Lake, around Lincoln Beach. I have also caught and seen several other channels caught in the north marina of Willard Bay.
Virtually all of the ice-caught cats I have witnessed were taken on jigs or baits being fished for other species, and came as a surprise. During one week in mid January, several years ago, guys fishing right in the middle of the north marina for crappies, using tiny ice flies and waxworms, were catching two pound channel cats fairly regularly. I think there was a school of them in a shallow hole there, because nobody was catching them anywhere else on the lake.
Same thing in Utah Lake. Cats will feed all year, even under the ice. They are slower, to be sure, but they will bite. Heck, they actually target them in some lakes in the upper midwest, catching some whoppers through ice holes, during the coldest part of the winter. And, it gets cold up there.
Some of the bigger cats I have seen caught through the ice were taken on whole or half minnows being soaked for walleyes. Almost any of the fish down there will accept crawlers, and sometimes you can get into a school of mud cats (bullheads) around one of the springs and you can’t get a bait to the bottom.
I have taken lots of cats in February and March, tossing crawler tipped jigs for early walleyes in open water, from my float tube. In fact, there are some big cats taken every year not too long after ice out. Some of them come into very shallow water, in protected areas, to soak up the early spring sunshine. They respond the same way if they can find a spring that pumps in water a couple of degrees warmer than the main lake.
Now, breathe through your nose and flip your calendar a few pages. The catfish time will be here soon enough…for some of us.
**In short, it may not be worth a trip dedicated just to catfish, but if you take an assortment of worms, minnows and maybe some carp or sucker meat, you just might score a winter kitty or two. **