Juggin'

Took Thomas and Jessica out this morning form some jugging.  We threw out 24; 13 in the shallows in about 7-9 FOW and 9 in the deep in about 32 FOW.  We used my "Guzzard Punch" bait, which is chicken gizzards soaked in Kool Aide and garlic powder.  Had a fantastic time and Thomas pulled in a big one!  Ended the day with 8 cats and 1 drum.  Ready to go again.

Family Fun - A Little Jug Fishing

Wheeler Lake

Time: 6:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Air Temperature: Low 63 - High 83
Water Temperature: 
Lake Level: 555.22

Weather Conditions: Mostly sunny and clear. Winds ESE- 6-10 MPH.

My wife and son joined me today for some family fun while jug fishing for catfish.  We wanted to give Thomas some introduction to fishing and jug fishing is a simple way to get out and catch some fish easily without any major skills needed.  Todd Whatley had give me some stand-up noodles jugs he built and today was the first day giving them a try.  They worked great and we had an awesome day!

"Eric!!?? Sgo fishing!"

Time: 7 AM - 1:00 PM
Air Temperature: 65 - 84 degrees during trip
Water Temperature: 83 degrees
Lake Level: 555.82' - 31,152 cfps - Perfect conditions
Weather Conditions: Light winds, variable 3-6 mph

Kyle twisted my arm on Friday to go fishing on Saturday morning.  Ok, it didn't take much twisting... I just needed an excuse...

We did a repeat trip of what Joe and I did the prior weekend.  We launched at the house and put out 10 jugs on the flats in front of my house baited with a mix of chicken gizzards and cut shad.  We placed the other 10 out by the mouth of Mallard Creek.  We then headed to the nuclear plant to fish rod and reels.

As soon as I dropped line, I was pulling in a channel cat.  Fishing was a little slow, but I managed to catch 4 cats around the boil line across the channel.  We ran back fished the jugs and pulled in a nice fat blue clocking in near 20 lbs and another smaller channel.  The blue was bigger than the pictures made it appear.

We went back to the plant to the intake gates and I pulled in another good fish.  Soon after, we ran the other set of jugs and then headed to Lucy's Branch for fuel. We ran across to the bluffs and bounced bottom there and I picked up another fish, but it was slow and starting to get hot.  We decided to call it a day and headed back to pick up jugs.  I think we picked up 3 more cats on jugs to finish the day with 6 rod and reel cats and 5 jug cats.  Kyle took home a great big goose egg and I'm going to trash talk and remind him for a little while 😂.

It's been 2 years since we did this last and we had a blast.  Need to get out there together more often.

Catfishing with friends

Time: 6:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Air Temperature: 71 - 81 degrees during trip
Water Temperature: 81 degrees
Lake Level: 555.44' - 53,325 cfps - Perfect conditions
Weather Conditions: Light winds, variable 2-5 mph

We had some family friends come in for the weekend.  Joe had never been fishing specifically for catfish before, so we went out to see what we could do to round up a few.  We launched from Cowford this morning and proceeded to drop some jugs.  We placed 10 baited with a mix of chicken gizzards and cut shad along the flats in front of my house.  We placed another 10 around the mouth of Mallard Creek and then went to the Nuclear Plant to try rod and reel.  

I immediately caught a little flathead on my first drop at the nuclear plant.  Joe reeled in a nice blue in the 6-8 lbs range around 8:45.  Fishing was a little slow along the boils and channel, so we ran the first set of jugs before moving over to the intake gates.  I think we caught one on the first pass on the jugs.  Back at the intake gates, Joe picked up a channel.  Within just a couple hours, we had already netted all three major catfish species.  

We ran the 2nd set of jugs without much luck and then headed down toward the bluff across from the Elk to try bouncing bottom around there.  Joe again landed a good channel before we headed back in to pick up all the jugs.  

The last run on the jugs was more fruitful as we picked up 3 more cats.  We looked everywhere, but ended up losing one jug.  Must have been one heck of a fish to have gotten in under and out of sight!

Overall, we ended the day with 7-8 cats with about half coming from rod and reel and half on jugs.  It wasn't the best fishing day ever, but was still solid and Joe got to experience pulling in a few nice cats. We culled our count down to 4 fish and went home and dropped them in the grease. Looking forward to doing it again next year!

Lazy Jugs...

Location: Wheeler Lake
Time: 11:00 AM - 3 PM

I've been gearing up for spring fishing season.  I took all my crappie rods apart and lubed them and soaked the spools in hot water to release line memory.  I needed to retie all the lines and figured I might as well launch the boat at the house and float some jugs while I drifted along tying rods.

I didn't catch but one catfish, but sure did enjoy floating around and I did get all my crappie rods tied and ready to go.

Night Time Jug Lines

Location: Joe Wheeler State Park and 2nd Creek

Time: 5:00 PM - 2:00 AM
Air Temperature: 90 Degrees
Water Temperature: 85 Degrees

Lake Level: 

Weather Conditions: Slight to Moderate winds from the south.

Fished with Doug and Douglas Ainsworth tonight. I got there early to try to catch live bluegill to use to target flatheads. I fished blown over tops with worms and a bobber and managed to catch 14 with Doug’s wife, Shirley.

Douglas dropped 16 jugs at dark along the south shore of Wheeler with fresh cut shad. I dropped 6 along the north west bend then we headed to 2nd creek to drop the rest. We went north of the boat landing at 2nd Creek and dropped 8 more jugs in 8-12 feet of water as the creek narrowed just before the bend. All of these had live bluegill on the bottom hook and cut shad on the top. We dropped 6 more off the rocky point out from the boat landing and baited these the same way and returned to Wheeler.

After a couple hours, we checked my first 6 in wheeler and found a 4 ft long gar, but no cats. We ran back to 2nd Creek and ran the group of 8. We caught one nice blue and found one jug had run away from the others. When we pulled it, it had been tangled over and over around a sunken tree. We managed to pull the entire tree up and untangle it. I can only imagine a flathead did this. We ran the other group of six and caught one more small cat. We also found one more jug had a broken line.

We headed back to Wheeler and pulled Douglas’s jugs. We caught one more small cat. We found 15 of the sixteen pretty easily. We were watching the last one in the spotlight as it was pulled under and it never came back up. It had to have been a big fish. We searched for a good while but never found it.

Overall, it was a blast and a good learning experience for nighttime jug fishing. I think I would repeat the bluegill tactic next time, but concentrate a little more around the creeks and fallen structure. Will definitely do it again soon!

Jug Recover + Bottom Bouncing = Winning

Location: Browns Ferry - Wheeler Lake - Alabama

Time: 6:00 PM - 9:30 PM
Air Temperature: 74-84 Degrees
Water Temperature: 83-85 Degrees
Lake Level: 555.96'
Weather Conditions: Calm early, but turning very choppy.  Winds from the South.

I got up this morning with the main intent to try to recover my jugs that I left floating overnight.  I launched from the house and headed over to where I originally launched the jugs last night.  I knew they drifted, but figured I'd start there.  I had studied the wind and current last night and found there was little to no significant current.  The main mechanism for movement would the the wind blowing from the south, south east.  I expected the jugs to be drifting north to north west. 

There were no jugs where I launched them, as expected.  I turned on the Navionics app and set it to track my course and I began to ride in a grid-like approach beginning on the north shore in case any had washed ashore.  They had not.  I continued to ride back and forth from the south bank to the north bank, traversing a little farther west each time.  Once I approached the islands where the power lines cross, I checked the south bank of each island to see if they had washed ashore.  I spotted the first jug just off the east point of the southernmost power line island.  I dropped a pin in the app to begin plotting a drift pattern.  This first jug was one of the ones with the monofilament leaders and had a channel cat on it.

I quickly picked up several more jugs within eye sight and plotted each one with a pin.  I quickly began to see the drift pattern being plotted and headed along that course and spotted more jugs.  I pick 11/12 up pretty quickly.  The last one was not anywhere to be seen, so I figured either a barge pulled it away, someone picked it up, it broke loose, or a fish pulled it away from the others.  I began making parallel runs along each side of the drift pattern.  On my final pass, I was going to head back towards the nuclear plant.  Along the way, I spotted and picked up the final jug, which had a channel cat on it, too.

I was VERY happy to have recovered all the jugs.  Navionics said I covered 25 miles in 1.75 hours during my attempt to round them up.  In the end, they had floated 3.5 miles over night.  The results of the monafilament vs. nylon experiment was interesting.  Of the 6 with monafilament, I caught fish on two jugs and a third showed one had been on, but had thrown the hook.  I had zero bites on the nylon.  I will be changing the others over to monofilament.

It was only about 8 AM and the weather was nice.  I had about 4 shad or 16 pieces of bait remaining from my trip last night, so I decided to bounce bottom with my new rig over in my normal spot at the nuclear plant.

The action was as hot as it had been the previous night.  I immediately begin catching good fish.  I fished here for about 1.5 hours and literally ran out of bait.  I caught 14 catfish on my 16 pieces of bait.  It was a very good morning! With rod and reel plus jugs, I caught 16 total and took 14 of them home. 

ThunderCats. Lost Jugs.

Location: Browns Ferry - Wheeler Lake - Alabama

Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Air Temperature: ?? Degrees
Water Temperature: 83-85 Degrees
Lake Level: 556.03' - A bit high
Weather Conditions: Calm to choppy, winds from the South.

Decided to night fish tonight.  I got up this morning and headed down to Wheeler Dam to try to catch some bait.  I was very happy to find the threadfin shad running hard.  I threw a casting net one time and literally caught so many that I had difficulty lifting the net out of the water.  I brought a 2.5-3 gallon bucket and filled it overrunning with shad in a single throw.  I headed back home and divided the shad into Ziploc bags.  I filled each bag with 15 shad and had a total of 18 bags.  I froze these for future trips.  Very successful bait trip!!

I launched at the house at around 7 PM.  I used shad as cut bait from the morning trip to the dam.  I launched 12 jugs on the south shore on the Decatur side just off the island outside of Mallard Creek in about 12-14 foot of water.  I had retied 6 of the jugs with monofilament leaders and left 6 with nylon leaders as a trial.

I headed back over to the nuclear plant and began fishing my normal spot alongside the boils.  I was bumping bottom with a new rig that I was experimenting with.  I've heard a lot of positive feedback from the Demon Dragon product line.  This is basically an inline float to keep your bait suspended in the strike zone and keep it from falling to the bottom or hanging straight down.  I had an idea to rig my bottom bouncing rigs up with small 3/4 size floats inline on each of my 2 leaders.  These really small slip floats actually worked very good to offset the weight of the hook and bait and kept the cut bait suspended nicely.  I dropped the down and bumped bottom like normal.

Immediately, I was on the fish.  The depth finder visibly had fish stacked up along the drop off of the pipeline.  This was nice to see.  I started getting strong hits immediately and began catching fish.  I stayed in this area and continued to fish my new rig for about an hour or hour and a half with very good luck.  Ended up catching 10 in this time on rod and reel.  The last one I caught was a very nice blue weighing around 25 lbs.  

I would have kept fishing, but there had been pop-up storms all day.  A storm cell came out of nowhere and the wind picked up and cloud to cloud lightening began filling the skies over both Decatur and Athens.  I grew pretty nervous and decided I better play it safe and pack it up.  I headed over to where I dropped off the jugs.  It was dark by this time and I made several passes but could not locate the jugs in the dark with the choppy water.  My spotlight also just wasn't as powerful as I remember.  After a few attempts, I thought it was best to cut my losses and head home.  I will try to find the jugs tomorrow morning.

Overall, other than abandoning the jugs for the night, it was a very successful trip.  I wish I could have stayed longer, but the storms just didn't cooperate.  

S L O W

Location: Browns Ferry - Wheeler Lake - Alabama

Time: 6:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Air Temperature: 89 Degrees
Water Temperature: 83-85 Degrees
Lake Level: 555.98'.
Weather Conditions: Calm.  Winds less than 6 mph SSE

I launched again from the house today with the intent of running jugs.  Today I launched them right in front of my house on the flat between the stump row and the channel in about 12 feet of water.  I had cut bait on all the hooks.  I only launched 12 today since they didn't do so good yesterday.

I went up to the nuclear plant to rod and reel fish.  Bite was very slow near the boils by the pipeline.  I only picked up two here today by bouncing bottom with shrimp.

I split my time between fishing the boils, the water intake gates, and running the jugs in between changing spots.  The jugs didn't produce a single fish on the first run.  The intake gates didn't produce any fish today at all.  I caught one nice blue about 8 lbs on my second jug run and also caught a small flathead. 

I picked Jessica up and we rotated through the normal spots again with no luck.  We even tried a bobber over the rocks on the bank to try to see if they were spawning on the rocks, but had no luck there either. 

We ran the jugs a final time and and caught one small blue.  Overall, a very slow day with only 5 fish.

Location: Browns Ferry - Wheeler Lake - Alabama

Time: 6:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Air Temperature: 94 Degrees Hot!!
Water Temperature: 83-85 Degrees
Lake Level: 555.99'.
Weather Conditions: Calm.  Winds less than 6 mph SSE

I had spend the previous week re-tying all my catfish jugs and added 8 more to the fleet, so I was anxious to get some jugs out.  I launched at the house and started off by dropping 20 jugs on the flat just west of Mallard Creek in about 14 feet of water.  I had cut bait on every hook.  I then headed to the nuclear plant to fish my normal spot along the pipeline.  

I was bouncing bottom with shrimp as bait.  Fishing was a bit slow.  I fished about 1.5 hours and pick up 3 catfish.  One was a very nice female blue cat full of eggs.  I'd say she weighted 10-12 lbs.  

I then headed over to run the jugs, but had absolutely ZERO fish or lost bait.  It begin to cross my mind that jug conditions may not be right.  We were on the tail end of a mayfly hatch and some of the catfish were releasing eggs.  They may not be on the flats like normal.  I pulled all the jugs and took them to the north side of the river and launched them in deeper water about 20 ft deep just as an experiment.  I figured the catfish may be moving shallow, but wanted to rule out deep water first.

I returned to rod and reel fishing over by the nuclear plant intake gates and pylons.  I picked up three more nice cats there with one big blue in the boat that probably weighed 10-12 lbs.  I released both of the large fish of the day.

Jessica joined me and we ran the jugs again.  ZERO luck again.  Headed back to the house having caught 6 cats total and kept the 4 that were of a good size to eat.