Anyone ever caught BIG cat out of mead???

[Dan79]

June 1997 Gypsum wash. just finished high school and way back then there was water in gyp wash and some 20-40 foot cliffs that were awesome for retarded kids like us to jump off at night... anyways... I had brought a rod as always and tied on a night crawler with no weight and just pitched it near some brush in the water and forgot about it... few mintues later some girl was screaming that my "fishing stick" was in the water...I grabbed it and 10 mins later had a 16 lb channel cat... Against my better judgement I kept it as all the other kids wanted to take pics with it when we got back to town... ended up stoppin at Blue Lake Tackle in NLV on the way back and had the kid there weigh it...remember the kid who worked there? About 16 at that time his grandad owned it? Pony tail and like a stoner type I guess; he used to sell us beer, cool dude....I only rat now since I have heard the place is torn down or a tire shop or something... too bad. ehhhh long story short yes there are some large cats there. And I do have pics, but they are old school and I have yet to master the scan/upload.... So your thinking "OK so great story dan.. what about helping me get a fish?" I got you. I would target the vegas wash area and marinas (as close as you can do so legally of course) I have seen 25lb cats off the ends of those docks... I spent hours watching them and what i learned was they dont give a *&$% about the popcorn, they are there for the panfish and smaller carp that get so caught up in chasing popcorn and acting domestic they make easy meals of themselves...Large cats are predatory as you all have said.... Cats dont shut down when its gets cold as some might think. In my carp killing days I would more often then not, catch cats in with the carp in the dead of winter. Even very shallow in vegas wash. Example the second biggest cat i caught from lake mead was about 7-8lbs and came on corn in 5 feet of water in Jan. To target the cats I would chum with my BAU carp chumming styles and then add two big cralwers to a hook with one or two kernals of corn... this rig would get cats 3/1 compared to the straight corn, sometimes it took larger than avg. carp too, and some days the carp would not touch it, just had to see what they wanted. Winter was always the season I did best on cats for numbers and size. There are some large cats in Mead, but overall I would say its much more a numbers game for the cats. I might have had 20 over 3lbs and 5 over 5lbs out of literally hundreds. They are not common, but they are there! Would love to see a 30lb cat posted up; I dont doubt there are a few out there. Good luck!
[signature]