Cutler - Benson Marina Saturday

[Tin-Can]

Decided to give Benson marina a try, and do some further recon before the Cutler Flotilla next month.
Stayed north of the highway bridge, and along the west edge moving every hour or so, dropping anchor, and soaking worms. Day was nice. Warm, variable winds but nothing hard. Most of the day was nice and quiet. About time I decided to head back to the ramp, a couple power boats and even a skier showed up on the water. They must have known exactly where there was a deep area, cause everywhere I was along the west edge was 2 to 4 feet. Down closer to the bridge, I sat over a area that was 11 to 17 feet deep. Caught about 2 dozen baby cats out of and returned to that spot. Must have been the Kitty nursery.[laugh]
Hooked up one Carp, self released at the boat, another carp I got into the net, unhooked and dropped back in. Got one nice size Cat. It won't cause any alarm in the Catfish Contest, but it will at least get me on the board finally and add to the Team North points.
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[SkunkedAgain]

Nice cat how big was it? Looks better than the one I got yesterday. Good job. Later J
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[CoyoteSpinner]

That bridge area seems to swarm with those "baby" cats - believe you've met the ever pesky Mud Cat, or Yellow Belly and we "fondly" know them. Nice channel though - I'll have to check entries - looks like a 2 footer or so?

Good chance on finding Crappie around the bridge and rocky areas too.

And yes - usually later afternoon - ski boats and jetskis seem to like to get out and cause havoc. I think there is a channel east side of the little island - but it's easy to drift out into even shallower waters. I usually hug the west side, as it sounds like you did.

Glad you made it out for some recon. Did you go north enough to meet up with the River inlet? Where it narrows up - there's two river channels that dump into Cutler from the Bear. The second is the wider and deeper of the two.

[Tin-Can]

That Cat was 26" and I had such a hard time getting the fish to hold still, the tape measure to sit up, and get the whole thing in one shot, I forgot to put the BFT sign in the photo [mad]. And I had it sitting right next to me on top of my tackle box ......shoooot !![frown]

I stayed along the West side. Directly across from the launch, then turned right and went along the west bank a couple hundred yards to what looked like a likely curve in the shoreline. Did that several times thru the day, anchored out in 4 or 5 spots. Got up just about parallel on the west side with the little hump of whatever sticking out of the middle of the marina area, but started to get over nothing more than 2 ft deep, and didn't want to risk running aground so turned around and worked way back to the bridge area. Thought about going under the bridge, but had my Bimini top up and was too lazy to drop it in order to clear the underside of the bridge.
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