04-02-2014, 02:35 PM
[#0000FF]Catching the largest fish of any species becomes a combination of luck, timing and skill. You have to be lucky enough to show up at the same place and at the same time as one of the few remaining old fish in the lake. Then you have to be lucky or skillful enough to present the right bait...the right way...to stimulate a bite. After that, you have to have good tackle and the skill to properly battle a big fish that will destroy poor gear or get loose from lesser skilled anglers.
Simple? Yeah...but not easy.
I seldom gear up and fish for BIG cats. But I do hook a fair number over 10 pounds. Virtually every larger cat I have ever hooked has been on either a whole small carp, white bass or big chub minnow. The only exception is when I fish a large strip of fresh carp meat...at least 8 to 10 inches long...with two or three hooks rigged in it. That is what I caught my 24 pound cat on back in the 70s.
I used to know a cataholic whose religion was big catfish. He claimed that many of his big cats...including plenty teens and twenties (pounds) were caught on a "ball of worms". He would go out crawler catching the night before a trip and load up a couple of big coffee cans with the fattest crawlers he could find. Then he would wad three or four of them on a big hook and chuck it out there. Sure, he had a lot of pesky bullheads and smaller cats munching the bait off his hook. But he also went bendo on more big cats each year than any ten other guys I knew of.
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Simple? Yeah...but not easy.
I seldom gear up and fish for BIG cats. But I do hook a fair number over 10 pounds. Virtually every larger cat I have ever hooked has been on either a whole small carp, white bass or big chub minnow. The only exception is when I fish a large strip of fresh carp meat...at least 8 to 10 inches long...with two or three hooks rigged in it. That is what I caught my 24 pound cat on back in the 70s.
I used to know a cataholic whose religion was big catfish. He claimed that many of his big cats...including plenty teens and twenties (pounds) were caught on a "ball of worms". He would go out crawler catching the night before a trip and load up a couple of big coffee cans with the fattest crawlers he could find. Then he would wad three or four of them on a big hook and chuck it out there. Sure, he had a lot of pesky bullheads and smaller cats munching the bait off his hook. But he also went bendo on more big cats each year than any ten other guys I knew of.
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