Flathead

[usmcgrunt]

For live bait you should only use fish from that particular body of water, but for cut bait you can catch your bait in one place, cut it up and use it in another place and conservation doesn't have a problem with that. And wayne, you're right about the circle hooks. I don't think I've ever had a swallowed hook or a foul hooked fish with circle hooks. My biggest problem is I keep setting the hook too early. The key is to wait until you feel the weight of the fish pulling on the line before you set the hook

[jbtiwns30]

so i went fishing for cats or anything at lake springfield above the dam this morning and all i had was bites and one little sunny. these guys came there and right away they were catching channel cats, guess i was in the wrong spot but anyways the cats they were catching were no more the 11 inches and they kept every single one of them. sorry i tend to keep the ones that are you know 3 lbs or more if i were to keep some for eating. i was just shocked these guys were keeping these small fish. if you were to keep the cats how big are your keepers?

[river angler man]

  On 7/21/2012 at 5:46 PM, jbtiwns30 said:

so i went fishing for cats or anything at lake springfield above the dam this morning and all i had was bites and one little sunny. these guys came there and right away they were catching channel cats, guess i was in the wrong spot but anyways the cats they were catching were no more the 11 inches and they kept every single one of them. sorry i tend to keep the ones that are you know 3 lbs or more if i were to keep some for eating. i was just shocked these guys were keeping these small fish. if you were to keep the cats how big are your keepers?

Yeah just my last time out I heard about people doing that. the people I heard doing it were keeping everything they caught no matter how small as well as crowding other people out even though there were plenty of spots. I'll usually keep channel cats if they're at least 15", so I let a lot of squeakers go.

[usmcgrunt]

For me the perfect eater size catfish is 1 to 5 pounds. Anything over that still tastes good, but I'd rather keep a big fish in the gene pool and for someone to catch later. The people that keep those tiny fish aren't real smart since there's hardly any meat on them, and you need a lot to make a meal. Kind of hard to do when the limit is 4 and possession limit is 8.

I went out last night and got a few bites, but no takers. I was getting some hits on a shad head, but I had one monster hit and run on a bluegill that was about 6 inches long. I think I'm going to wait a few days before going again since the fishing has been so slow lately. Hopefully we get some rain that'll kick start the fishing again. I'm itching to hook into some fish so big it scares me lol

[jim m]

usmcgrunt, you've convinced me. got to get to the point when the weather cools a bit. it is hard on this old fat man. got the equipment just got to get up and go.

[usmcgrunt]

Jim, hopefully I'll see you out once this weather isn't hot enough to melt my sinkers lol. Springfield Lake is basically a low pressured lake for big cats. Tons of people fish there, and most of them catch fish but there's not very many people that have the equipment or the know how to specifically target the big ones, making them easier to catch than in higher pressured places like Stockton and Truman. And it's a much smaller place so you can cast to the majority of the fish

[jbtiwns30]

has anybody ever tried bacon for catch fish bait? i have some that we didnt care for so i wanna try to use it up for cats, what do you guys think?

[usmcgrunt]

Bacon is a pretty good bait. The trick is to throw it in a pan for just long enough to get the fat juices flowing. Then you can either wrap it around your hook and tie it on with some thread or just roll it up and stick it on the hook. I've had pretty good luck with it on eater size channels.

[river angler man]

when I was a kid I would use bacon sometimes and try and smear it with cheese, I did this mostly because I didn't have to buy it the ingredients though. It worked pretty well. I never fried it up at all but he may have something there.

[jim m]

if you're after bigger size fish, you can't beat live bait. large minnows or 3" to 5" perch. personally I like the perch. easy to catch your own bait