Whites Or Catfish

[WettinLine]

I know that the TR forum is mostly related to bass fishing, but I've been fishing them all year and need a change (too many boats last weekend doing the samething). I'm thinking of heading out to the Cape Fair area or maybe Kings to try something different, does anyone has any suggestions or tips/tricks to lay on this topic? I'll be one less boat chasing the same fishing in the same cove!

[Sam]

I switched from mostly bass fishing over to other species years ago for the same reasons. I like to bring supper home plus some for the freezer, and bass aren't the best for that. I don't like to kill bass anyway, as so many fishermen are devoted to outsmarting them and then releasing them - why mess up their fun?

So for me that leaves crappie, white bass, walleyes, and the "perch" family (big bluegills, green sunfish, rock bass). Not so much catfish, as I usually don't have the patience to fish with bait and wait for a bite. We have a lot of fun with all these, and I generally have filets in the freezer. I catch/release quite a few bass too while fishing for these others, so I'm not missing out on anything.

To locate crappie, we cast and slow-troll swimming minnows around brushy banks until we locate some, then concentrate on specific cover. To locate white bass we'll troll Roostertails in the mouths of big coves and where flats drop off into a main channel - always watching and listening for the "waterfall" sound of whites boiling on top so we can run over there and cast to them. Walleyes - deep-running plugs or Roadrunners tipped with a half-nightcrawler, fished around rocky channels, drop-offs from flats, and over the top of flooded cedars. "Perch" - that's tiny Gitzit tubes on 1/16 oz. jigheads cast to chunk-rock banks. I've got a 8" mark on the handle of my lightest spinning rod, and any black perch (green sunfish), bluegill, or goggleye (rock bass) that measures up goes in the live well for some tasty little filets.