Felix

It's been a little while since I've gotten out after carp. While nothing gets my heart pumping like fly casting to a tailing fish, I figured that since I have a bunch of juglines rigged up, I may as well set some out with carp bait and see what happens. Dedicated British anglers have developed complex baits based on very scientific nutritional guidelines. I don't know if "Rob's Carp Assassin" is such a bait, but the directions read like a cookie recipe so I thought I'd give it a try.
The morning started brilliantly, right away I hooked up a beautiful fish on my version of the carp carrot fly.Next I paddled into a small lagoon, the same lagoon where Tara and I had placed our juglines a few days before, and baited 8 jugs with sweet smelling dough-balls. The lagoon lies right between two good flats and I knew that carp often hang out there between meals. Having just landed a fish in one area, I left the jugs and moved on to the second flat. The carp were everywhere! Even though the wind was blowing, the morning sun penetrated the water and I could see orange tails in every direction. After missing a few, I hooked up to a medium sized fish. Some carp don't run far when they're hooked but this one took off like a rocket. It paused about 100 feet away, and then swam off in a completely different direction. Unfortunately, my leader had tangled in some algae and the direction change pulled the hook free.
I reeled my fly in and looked over my shoulder. One of the jugs was moving! In fact it was twitching violently as though something was trying to submerge it. I quickly weighed anchor and paddled over. At the entrance to the lagoon is an old submerged bridge, and as I got close I saw that indeed something was trying to pull the jug underwater and under the bridge.
I grabbed the jug and hauled it in. Hoping for a carp and expecting a turtle, I was thrilled to see I had caught a big ol'catfish:
I'm pretty sure this is a big channel catfish. Though big channel cats are hard to distinguish from blue catfish, blues often have more than 30 rays on their anal fin. This fish only has about 23:
With only 8 jugs out for less than an hour, I caught this fish on a carp bait in the middle of the morning; it makes me question some of the conventional catfishing wisdom.

Got Milk?

Jug-fishing for catfish is a popular southern pastime. A jugline is simply a float with a baited hook suspended below. Some jugs are weighted while others are left free to drift. Jug fishing is often done in the dark when catfish move out of their hiding places to feed.
After a recent, and unsuccessful jug-fishing attempt I decided to try again. I bought more foam pool noodles, which I cut into "jugs" and rigged up a total of 29 new juglines:
Surely, I thought, this would be enough to tip the scales in my favor. So, Tara and I headed out one evening in the boat. We baited the hooks with pieces of squid and placed the jugs in a shallow bay. After several hours paddling around in the dark and having caught nothing but an unfortunate snapping turtle, we headed home.
Maybe, I thought, squid wasn't the right bait. So I called up Matt and headed out one morning to catch some panfish. Fresh cut bluegills, I had read, were an excellent catfish bait:
With our superior bait, Tara and I once again headed out into the darkness. This time we placed the jugs carefully, 25 of them in a long line along a submerged road bed, and four of them in a small lagoon nearby. Then we paddled in and headed home, leaving the jugs for the night. We returned early the next morning, anxious to see what we had caught.
The jugs were still in a long line. A bad sign. Indeed the baits were untouched all along the road bed, until the last one. The last jug had been pulled 20 or 30 feet from its original position. Expecting another turtle, I grabbed the line and gave it a pull. I felt a fish on the other end! We had caught a small flathead catfish.
After releasing our catch, we paddled over to collect the last four jugs from the lagoon. Mysteriously, all of these baits had been taken! In fact, one hook was missing completely, and the swivel-snap that held it had been twisted apart:
Later, I told all this to Ronnie "Grumpy" Howard. If Ronnie lived near the ocean, he would be the saltiest sea-dog I know - even though now he is primarily a fly fisherman and trout guide, when it comes to catching fish in Tennessee, Ronnie's been there and done that. When he heard about the broken swivel-snap he told me that when a big cat gets hooked, it will spin in an attempt to free itself.
Had we hooked and lost a lunker?

The Hazards of Fishing

Besides hooking oneself, freshwater fishing has a number of other hazards. I ran across two of Tennessee's more dangerous residents this morning - the dreaded denizen of the deep, the snapping turtle (look closely, it is there):
Even more fearsome, I also ran into the deadly
cotton-head rattle-moccasin!

Post Script: This snake is actually a cotton-mouth! Thanks to Bill Bailey for the I.D.

Black & Mild or Getting Skunked

My buddy David had us up to his lake house this weekend. We arrived in the evening and headed out on the pontoon boat after catfish. Four anglers, four rods, 11 jug lines, three and a half hours, and all we managed to do was lose three jugs and catch a stunted, one-eyed channel cat!

All we could hope was that the next morning would bring better luck. We awoke to excellent conditions and headed back out to fish for bass before breakfast.

 On the way out we spotted the three lost jug lines. One bait was intact, and more or less where we had placed it the night before, but the other two jugs had clearly been pulled out of position. One line was cut above the hook, a sure sign that something had been on it. The final jug had a fish on! It felt like a decent sized catfish, but unfortunately the line had been badly abraded and snapped as soon as I put tension on it.
After breakfast we traded the big pontoon boat for the small jon boat and headed up David's secret bass stream:

 David wasn't exaggerating when he talked up this spot. Even though it was a Sunday afternoon, we were completely alone and the fish were stacked up in every deep pool and log jam along the stream. The water was full of big hungry bluegills: Brennan tried out fly fishing for the first time and had some luck with the sunfish:

Bigger bass were hiding deeper but would attack big lures or flies. David caught his weight in big bass before lunch time:

Land Between The Lakes

This past weekend, Tara and I decided to go camping at Tennessee's Land Between the Lakes. We bought back country camping passes at the park entrance, packed up our boat, picked a spot on the map and started paddling.
We managed to pack the gear without any trouble and after a a few hours we reached the bay where we hoped to find a suitable camp spot.
Turning off the main channel we were met with an exciting occurrence:
The back of the bay was filled with nervous water (all the little circles of ripples in the picture.) Millions of small bait-fish had congregated in the warm shallows. Such a gathering doesn't go unnoticed by hungry piscivores, and every 30 seconds or so a marauding bass would bust through part of the school with a splash.
As soon as we had set up camp I set out to try my luck fishing. I waded out into the school and tied on a clouser minnow that was about the same size and color as the bait-fish I was seeing. There were schools of bait and feeding fish in every direction so I just started casting. I began with a fast retrieve near the surface but got no strikes. I slowed my strips, pulling the fly almost leisurely through the water, and letting it sink down near the bottom of the school. It wasn't long before I felt tension on the line. I set the hook and played the fish a few feet before it leaped into the air, a nice bass!
I landed half a dozen fish in about two hours and lost as many more. Most were bass, but I did catch an aggressive bluegill and a small drum that was cruising for an easy meal.