Blue Cats

[gtdaero]

Our kids are coming to the lake tomorrow through Monday and want to do limb lines and jugs for blues and channels. We are down by Monte Ne. I have never caught a blue down there just lots of flatheads and channel. Any suggestions for locations and bait to get into some bigger fish?

[Dan the fisherman]

Man sorry, i don't have a clue. I've caught a few real nice channel cats trolling in the winter.. But honestly never targeted them.. Wish I had more for ya. Hopefully somebody will jump on without knowledge about it.

[beaverbeater]

When it comes down to cat fishing, you are generally going to be limited to what you catch based upon your bait. I am not a fan of prepared baits, but I always have a bag or two of some dough and some of those dead shad. (Always good to get backup). In my experience, all the channels I have caught were on cut bait. Blues generally both live shad, dead shad, shrimp, soap, anything really. And flatheads mainly on live bait of any kind, except during the a fullish moon. I have caught a lot of flatheads on dead bait on the full moon, my belief is that the dead shad rolling around on the bottom illuminates slightly to make it look alive. That being said I have caught all species of cat on all over the lake. I personally am not a fan of jugs (always seem to get the gat snagged up). I am a big fan of bottom rigging lines into pole holders and pole fishing em. Nothing like bringing what feels like a vw bug from the bottom of the water. Personally, the most sucess I have found was using a mix of live/dead shad/brim/hotdogs on limblines in creeks and my poles on the bottom near a ledge. Always had a lot of sucess that way on beaver. either way, you have soldiers. I would get them set up on catching brim, (always fun because you will always land fish) throw out a few cast nets for shad, and bring hotdogs (because it's the darn 4th and it's too American)