I sure am missing that lake this time of year, should be out chasing big walleye right now, I have seen guys trolling the east side of the island looking for the big mamas, most likely there are cats there to.
Great early cat report, especially that 30 incher. great fish. Glad you three got out and no skunk was involved. What was the air temp while you were out there before the wind came up?
Hey Jim, sounds like a great report, you did a great job of figuring them out… Does take a long time to find cats this time of year… congrats… Jeff
Thanks Curt. The air was about 55 degrees F before it started cooling down.
Thanks Jeff! I was planning to start setting up the cat contest for this year. I figured a March 15 start. Does that sound good to you?
[size=medium]This unusually warm winter got me antsy to catch some catfish and restock the freezer, so I contacted Jon (Dirt Bag) and Craig (Catchinon) and twisted their arms to go with me. Almost every year I try to get cats in cold water, and it usually results in the first skunk of the year. I may have forgotten to tell them that until they were already committed to go though [font="Segoe UI Emoji", sans-serif]?[/font][/size]
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[size=medium]I’m doing some renovations on my boat, so we took Jon’s rig for this trip! We launched out of Lincoln about 1 P.M. The plan was to fish during the warmest part of the day and then a few hours after dark. Water was 45 degrees in the harbor and 42 in the main lake. The channel was 4-5 feet deep. The air was calm and balmy at 55 degrees, balmy for Feb anyway. While launching we saw a guy catch a perch near the dock. When he tossed it back, I got excited. We had only thawed WB, from last year and I wanted something fresher. 5 minutes later he got another and I hollered and asked if I could have it for cat bait. Nice guy, he gave me that one and another he got while I was parking the truck. He said he cat fished a lot at UL and that his biggest fish came early in the spring![/size]
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[size=medium]I usually find the cats still deep in the early spring with only a few near the shore, so we started dragging small chunks of both baits just outside the harbor. We headed north at around 0.4 MPH. Some of the rigs had #8 spin n glo’s and most had ¼ ounce or lighter weights. Everything was geared to smaller and slower presentations than we use in warmer water. We also had 2 ultralight rods with small offerings to try to get a fresh WB.[/size]
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[size=medium]By 3 hours into the trip, we had fished water from 5 to 10 feet deep, in 3 different areas and had gotten 2 taps on the ultralights and not a wiggle on the cat baits. I was beginning to remember several earlier years when we went home skunked. We were east of the island and Jon suggested the water should be warmer in the shallows, so we pulled the gear and headed south until we got to the first transition. That happened at about 9.5 feet.[/size]
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[size=medium]We put fresh bait on and this time trolled south toward the shore. The water temp had gone from 43 to almost 45. 15 minutes later we were just about 8 feet deep and one of the back rods wiggled 3 or 4 times and then started to bend. “He’s on there, get him,” we said to Craig. The first cat of the year, for us, came in flopping and rolling lethargically. I guessed 27 inches when I first saw it and quickly added that I was way out of practice after a winter of 12 to 16-inch trout and 8-inch perch. It turned out to be just under 25 inches, a keeper and a de-skunker![/size]
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[size=medium]After landing it, our first question was whether it had chosen the front hook with the thawed WB or the back one with fresh perch. The world may never know. It had the WB in its mouth, and the perch clear down in its gullet![/size]
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[size=medium]About 20 minutes later we had just hit 4 FOW and the same rod wiggled once and then started to bend. Since I’m used to fishing with just 2 people in the boat I hopped back and grabbed the rod. Another hook-up and another lethargic cat. As I leaned on the rod to test the weight, Craig said: “That looks like a bigger fish.” When it surfaced 20 feet behind the boat I said: “I think this will be the first 30” plus cat of the year.”[/size]
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[size=medium]Jon netted it and it was a really thick and deep bodied fish. It had been eating well over the winter! The tape said just under 31” and the scale said 12.5 pounds! Now we just needed to get Jon on a cat.[/size]
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[size=medium]It took almost 45 minutes to get the next hook up. I had another rod rigged just the same as the one that had caught the first two cats, so I traded it for the other back rod. The only difference was the level wind reel. Unfortunately, that was enough. The next hit was a fish on that rod. Jon picked it up and tried to tighten the line to set the hook and nothing happened. The star drag had been bumped and before he could get it adjusted well enough to set the hook, the fish was gone. [/size]
[size=medium]Another 15 minutes and the same back rod jiggled 6 or 8 times but never started to load up. I think Jon was just starting to feel cursed when the other back rod loaded up and started dancing. This fish stuck and Jon got his first cat of the year. It was 23 inches, so we had another one for the stringer.[/size]
[size=medium]I had told Craig and Jon that half a dozen cats would be a great trip this early. I was just starting to think we would make it when the wind came up out of the NW. There was not a lot of wind, maybe 5-7 MPH, but there hadn’t been even a ripple on the water before that. Within 5 minutes the water temperature started dropping and I could see rain up toward the point of the mountain. We fished another 90 minutes, and we never got another wiggle anywhere. When it started to sprinkle, we abandoned the “stay till after dark” part of the plan and headed for the ramp.[/size]
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[size=medium]One of the reasons for going after cats in February was because Craig had told me a few weeks ago that he would like to get a cat in every month of the year. We only got 3, but he and Jon were both able to check February off the list. Now we just have to see if we can get some for the next 11 months in a row![/size]