"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!

Jugging with Doug and Douglas

Location: Browns Ferry - Wheeler Lake - Alabama

Time: 8:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Air Temperature: 86 Degrees Hot!!
Water Temperature: 81-85 Degrees
Lake Level: 554.7' - A little more than a foot low.
Weather Conditions: Started calm, choppy by the early afternoon.

Fished with Doug and Douglas Ainsworth for catfish today.  Launched by my house this morning.  Immediately noticed water had dropped.  TVA was pulling water out in preparation of rising waters from all the recent rain from the tropical storm.  

We launched some jugs over on the flats off the point of Mallard creek in 13-14 feet of water.  The idea was to catch the cats on their journey leaving the shallows from their overnight feeding and heading to the channel. Then we headed over to the nuclear plant.  I had fears that we might be dealing with some strong current and that ended up being the case.  I've never seen current so strong in Wheeler Lake.  We had a really tough time keeping in the sweet spot and keeping our line vertical.  We gave it a shot of a couple hours, then decided it wasn't worth the struggle.  Doug did catch one blue cat while bouncing bottom.  We had several other good bites, but just could stay on them in the current.  We were using shrimp and cut shad as bait. We did notice the catfish guide boats appeared to be heading in early.  I think they were struggling, too.  

We decided to run the jugs and regroup with a new plan.  Jugs ended up producing well!  We caught 5 fish off the first float with one being a whopper.  I'd estimate it to weigh in around 20 lbs.  With the success on the first float, we reset the jugs and tied up a couple more and let them soak for another hour.  We ran them the 2nd time  around 1:00.  We only caught one on the 2nd float, so it appeared the fish had made their move, so we called it a day.

Ended up keeping 7 cats.  They dressed to almost 8 lbs of finished fillets.  Looking forward to doing it again!