I decided to try my luck with some cats at Willard early this morning. I arrived at the north dike at 5:15 and it was still dark. As I made my way down the dike road to my target area I passed a couple guys already there (or still there) who were releasing a cookie cutter cat. Sweet! I thought. It's going to be a good morning for the kitties.
I got setup in the dark, soaking a worm on the bottom and casting a marabou tipped with a worm about 4 feet under a bobber. About dawn my worm on the bottom rod started getting action. Every 10 to 15 minutes or so my line would take off out to the middle of the lake, I'd wait a few seconds, close the bail, and take a swing only to find a disappointing lack of fish at the end of my line.
I don't know what I was doing wrong. Maybe I was letting them take too long, maybe not long enough. All I know is that between the 12-15 takers I had between dawn and 8:30 I only caught 2 fish. One 19" cat and a 20" Wiper who was a pleasant surprise among my morning of swings and misses.
Sorry, no fish pictures. I somehow forgot to take any photos of the days catch. I did, however, take a few pics of the full moon sitting above the west dike.
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they might have felt resistance and bailed on your offering. Some cat anglers believe strongly that any resistance at all can turn cats away after biting.
What did the wiper hit on jig and worm?
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The wiper came on a worm on the bottom too. Not a lick of action on the jig and worm.
I was trying to set the hook as soon as I closed the bail, maybe I just wasn't quick enough.
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[cool][#0000ff]I might toss out a couple of potential things you can address to increase the percentage of hookups.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]1. Sharp hooks...with hook tips left exposed so that the bait does not act as a "weedless" cover for the hook. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]2. Hooks should be big enough to hook the size fish you are anticipating and small enough to fish the bait you are using without overpowering it. Size 4 and 2 are about right for worm fishing, if you rig the worms right.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]3. When the fish are active they "gulp and go". You don't usually have to let them take it very far. As long as they have the hook inside their mouths you can hook them with a good hookset.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]4. Let the fish pull the line tight before setting the hook...and then snap your wrist to set it...don't just pull back...unless you are using circle hooks. You can't put a nail through a board by pushing on it. You need to whack it with a hammer. If you are fishing with mono you have to take out all the stretch in the line and get a positive pow. The longer you let the fish run the more line (and curve) you have to straight out and stretch out before you can really get the hook to punch into the fishes' mouths.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]5. If you are losing fish after the hookset, try a "double hookset". Pop them once and then reel down tight and pop them again. If you have a soft rod tip or stretchy line one pop might not get the hook all the way into the tough mouth of some fish.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]In short, it all comes down to a balance between bait, hook, rod, line and technique. If something is out of balance your percentages will suffer.[/#0000ff]
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Thanks TD that's all great advice that I'll keep in mind the next time out. The only thing I can think of is I was covering the tip of the hook with the worm it could have been acting as a "weedless" cover and just pulling right out of the fishies mouth.
I use braid so there's almost no stretch in the line. All my hooks were brand new size 4. The fish were moving quickly so it didn't take long from the time I closed the bail to the time the fish hit the end of the line and I snapped the rod tip up. I didn't need any double hook-sets, they were gone after the first hook-set.
One thing not right and it turned a possible kitty limit into a one cat morn.
I'll get after it again soon though. I've got big plans in my head to try some smoked cat and I'll need more than one to make it worth a days worth of smoking. [cool]
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Worms generally are much easier to get a good hook set compared to cutbait / chubs.
That is interesting you caught your wiper on worms on the bottom. I've been doing a lot of reading on some Colorado boards and they catch a lot of wipers on cut bluegill, shad, even mollusks.
I remember utcatman saying he has caught a mess of wipers on cutbait before too. They are not picky.
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[cool][#0000ff]Wipers have been without edible sized shad for quite a while. I am sure that a lot of them are still in a "foraging" mode...munching anything edible they can find. DWR surveys on wipers before the shad fry are a menu item shows a wide variety of food remnants in the stomachs...including crawdads, terrestrial insects and even midge larvae. They get hungry and will hit almost anything until they pattern on shad of a certain size.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Probably half the wipers I catch are on small jigs tipped with worm...and a high percentage of the others are on dragged minnows. After that it is about even between crankbaits and pearl colored plastics in 3" shad shape.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]There are also a lot of wipers caught in the late fall on crawlers and cut baits. I have seen a lot of cat anglers go bendo on wipers while soaking baits for kitties. Sometimes seems unfair when you have pounded the water to a froth all day...with all the refined wiper stuff...and the bank tanglers catch them on "garbage baits". Life ain't fair.[/#0000ff]
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Yeah I don't think they are very picky either. It's just a matter of being in the area of a hungry one and giving them something to try to stick in their mouths.
One thing I found interesting in cleaning both fish was the lack of anything in their stomachs. I would have figured that they would have been feeding throughout the night especially with the full moon. I found a couple mostly digested crawdads in the cat and absolutely nothing in the wiper.
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I think that braid is your enemy in this case. I have a rod rigged with braid but I know there are some times, lots of times when I won't use it. LOL. It doesn't cast light things very far if at all. And if I'm using small hooks I get a very low percentage hookset. And I'm no beginner to hook setting LOL. The first time I sight fished for bass with braid, boy was I shocked! That bass had it all the way into the mouth, 100% percent, I watched the entire plastic get inhaled and gulped deep a second time. I set as hard as normal. COMPLETE and utter slack! If was as if the hook and lure were nowhere near it! I was shocked! I almost never miss! When it happened several times in a row, I knew it was the braid. I almost gave up on braid. I was using a size 4 drop shot Gamakatsu hook. Later I discovered with big hooks like 1/0 and 4/0 offset shank, there are no such problems. I dunno why but big sharp hooks are no problem but finesse stuff, it won't set with braid. Big spinnerbaits also seem to set with no problem with braid. I was using spiderwire stealth 50lb. Braid is also poor hooksetting performance with jigs. Missed many white bass strikes when I experimented with the braid rod. When I switched back to mono, every set was good. LOL
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