Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: Hillbilly on March 22, 2010, 11:12:03 am
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Me, Mechslasher, and Cody threw out some jugs Saturday night, wound up with about 75-80 lbs. of fish-21 catfish and three lake lizards. Didn't catch any monsters, but we got some pretty good ones-an 11 pounder, two ten pounders, two eight-pounders, and as assortment from there on down. Had a ball, and got plenty of fish-fry ingredients. We're planning on bringing some catfish to the Hickory shoot and having a fish fry one night, so durnit, I guess we'll have to go catch some more before then. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. ;D That catfish juggin' is a lot of fun.
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Nice haul of catfish guys! :)
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Not bad at all for a days fishin. I love me some fried catfish...Mmmm.
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You got some nice ones in there. I sure miss my trips to Mississippi. Steve
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Good haul,love that catfish. :)
Pappy
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you forgot to mention the gar that started biting on the jug while we were baiting the rest. they were biting so good, he couldn't wait for us to leave.
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What kind of cats are they? Channels? If so they look a bit different in color than the Yooper Channels.
Wouldn't eat one of the local ones for a million bucks yuck :P
Anyway congrats looks like ya all had fun eh
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i think they were all channels except the one on the far left, it's a flathead. hoping steve and cody can come back soon and i can put them on a 50+ pounder. it's a blast to watch someone get the net on one of them! especially when they are on a long line ;D
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Look's like some good eating, there.
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A little salt, pepper and hot sauce. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM dats good eatin
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We dont eat catfish in these parts but they are still fun to catch. Looks like a great days fishing :)
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What kind of cats are they? Channels? If so they look a bit different in color than the Yooper Channels.
Wouldn't eat one of the local ones for a million bucks yuck :P
Anyway congrats looks like ya all had fun eh
Dana ...Catish is Catfish...unless it's Farm Raised ...then it's Trash....... :P...The Channel and Flathead Cats down here are a Yellowish Color...they tell me it's due to the water Color...aint Clear and ice Cold like back Home
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Nice haul! I've got fishin on the brain but am stuck at work for about two more weeks. So the lake lizards are gar? My first thought was gators...
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Good 'uns. I wouldn't trade that flathead for all them channels ;D
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I don't know what Jug fishing is, but it sounds like a better idea than noodling. ;D
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I don't know what Jug fishing is, but it sounds like a better idea than noodling. ;D
Rick...Jugging is the same as Trotline Fishing...it amounts to two weights...two Floats per Line...and main Line with as many drops and Hooks as the State allows you to run....you bait the Hooks with Chad...Minnows...Comets...whatever...and lay it out in the water...and come back the next day to reap your catch......
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our jugging down here in s.c. is tying a 12 - 24" line and hook to a quart or two liter plastic jug with a piece of cut bait and letting it float all night. we can run 50 per man, steve and i ran 80 sat. night and averaged a pound a jug. i grew up using quart oil jugs but they are being banned so now we are using pool noodles in varying designs. after trying several different hook designs, i've settle on the circle style hooks. very few catfish get off once a circle hook grabs'em. i think we only had three or four jugs that didn't have bait sun. morning. i'll post a pic of my pool noodle design tomorrow. a friend gave me some kevlar string that is used on commercial weaving looms and is all but unbreakable.
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Nice haul guys. Some hush puppies, fried taters, a bit of cole slaw and a few cold ones and a pan of hot grease! ;D mmmmm
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Jugging down here you are apt to get just about as many Soft Shell Turtles as catfish. And also whatever is on the hook is also just bigger bait for the Big lizards. It's against the law in Florida, now. We can run Trot lines, though, 25 hooks to a line.
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Yeah, those Frankensteined pool noodles are working out good. I bet whoever makes those things had no idea that rednecks would be stuffing PVC pipe and coat hanger wire in them and using them to catch catfish. :) I've gotten sold on those circle hooks, too. They're the shizzle.
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What kind of cats are they? Channels? If so they look a bit different in color than the Yooper Channels.
Wouldn't eat one of the local ones for a million bucks yuck :P
Anyway congrats looks like ya all had fun eh
Dana ...Catish is Catfish...unless it's Farm Raised ...then it's Trash....... :P...The Channel and Flathead Cats down here are a Yellowish Color...they tell me it's due to the water Color...aint Clear and ice Cold like back Home
Catfish are bottom feeders so here in the river they are full of all them nasty chemicals that were dumped in the river, Mercury and PCB to name a few, eat em at your own risk eh :o
I did try one years ago that I caught in the Escanaba River but it just tasted like mud, maybe there is a secret to cooking them ??? As kids we ate bullheads that we caught from clean water
when ya peel their skin off you have beautiful pink meat just like a trout :)
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Dana...Channel Cats...Flatheads....and Blues are not Scavengers...they are not Bottom Suckers.....They Feed primarily at night using taste buds in the sensitive barbels and skin to locate prey...... Although they normally feed on the bottom..... Channel Cats also will feed at the surface and at mid-depth...... Major foods are insects.... crayfish..... clams..... crustaceans and fish..... Baby Channel Cats eat invertebrates... but larger ones eatminnows and small fish too..... Contrary to popular belief carrion is not their normal food.....
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Yeah, what Mike said. Catfish aren't necessarily bottom feeders. We've caught them on these jugs with a foot of line over twenty-thirty feet of water. And the flatheads are very predatory-the best bait to use to fish for flatheads is live fish. Around here at least, catfish don't pick up as much mercury as largemouth bass and walleye. And Dana, any bad taste in a catfish is usually in the skin. Fillet them and get that skin off, and they taste about like flounder. I like catfish better than trout for eating.
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growing up, we would dissect the stomachs of 30-40+ pound catfish to see what was in them. out of one flathead, i remember we pulled two mice, a crawfish, and two 12" white bass. we started to fillet the bass, but didn't. still, to this day, can't figure out where it got the mice. here's a pic of one of my noodles.
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man i miss eaten catfish!!
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You guys missed out on the best dinner last night, fried catfish, hushpuppies, french fries mmmmmmmmm! :) The gar was very good, taste like gator, need to experiment on this It was very good. My dad and I liked to good catfishing and some rocking(rock bass) I miss those days, lots of camping and fishing you can't beat that. ;D
Tina
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We only have channel cats, if I catch any this year I will try em again even, ya soak the meat in salt water or milk or anything?
Love hush puppies especially with onion and jalapeno :)
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tina, i told steve to bring you next time. we need another apprentice baiter, be sure to bring a hand towel! ;D
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Flathead is one of the finest eating fish swims fresh water. You must remove alll fat and red meat and the inside belly liner or it will taste like a shad would. I grew up on this fish and love them still. I had some fried just last night, my Debbie knows how to do it right. These were caught the old ways. Grabbed them by the bottom jaw and said "You going with me fish" otherwise known as noodling<gg> Mike Smyth
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Mike, you need to post some pics of a few of those hosses that y'all have wrassled out of the water out there. Y'all usually get some nice'uns.
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Chris you and Steve just needs someone to cook & clean the fish. :) If I come down I would like to do the bow fishing with the gar, and stand back. ;D
Tina
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when i get back from jamaica, come on down. the carp and gar should be really rolling in the shallows about then! work on steve for the weekend of 4/17.
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Nice bunch fellas.They're bitin' over here too. ;) God bless
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Aw man, when I think back on the thousands of pounds of channel cats that I threw back into the Missouri River up in North Dakota when I was chasing them ugly-butt walleyes I can only greive, grevious grieving!
Nowadays I am better edjumakated, and we hit the Belle Fourche ( bell foosh ) river every chance we get in the summer for beautiful silvery-blue channel cats that generally run 4-8 lbs. We found the best bait is a frog, the second best bait is uncooked 50-60 count shrimp. On a good night we can turn a pound of $6 shrimp into about 75 lbs of whiskerfish.
Of course, in the natural progression of things, we have to sip a barley soda and stoke up a nice Dominical long filler stogie in order to get the fish to bite. Well, maybe they bite without beer and cigars, but we ain't the ones to risk getting skunked.
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will have to try the shrimp next time. always on the look out for the next great bait. got to be easier than using 2" shinners that have been cut in half.
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nice. ;D all i catch is turtles. :P
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I used to always use the shrimp. Then I switched to squid that had sat in the sun for a day. Squid is like using tough, stinky rubber.
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Chris, If I've got shrimp, I don't need catfish-I'll eat the shrimp. ;D
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Catfish, and hush puppies, and grits! :o Ahhh man, now I hungry for fried Catfish! :P Thanks, just what I need at 1:09 am!
I gotta stop reading these post this late! ::)
Wayne
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Steve, I used to go by the Fish Market and buy a half dozen Mullet when we went camping on the river. We'd get there late in the afternoon and bait two 25 hook trot lines with cut up Mullet. Then we'd cook the remaning 4 for dinner. And harvest catfish the rest of the weekend. We'd also get crawdad's, gig frogs and hunt hogs the rest of the weekend.
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We used to use liver, in patches of nylon stocking material, and old shrimp, in the same material, some people have used soap, I think it was Ivory, I never have, but I have heard of it. Hey, Tiller, there is a new line for your soap, "bottom blossom" the catfish cocaine. ;D
Just about anything stinky will get their attention. Mashed up earthworms, in the nylon stocking material, etc. Frog guts, and so forth. Heck you could save your fish guts, and freeze them, and then use them for bait, wrapped up in the nylon stocking material. Stockings, panty hose, whatever holds the bait, without it coming off the hook. Plus it is reusable. If it gets torn a bit, just re wrap it. ;)
Wayne
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mr. eddie, i eat mullet to. not to bad. with expeditions like that a cast net is my best friend. you can almost always catch something edible.
stickbender, i like the stocking idea. may try that. i love chicken liver for catfish bait, but always had trouble keeping it on the hook. ;D
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Smoked Mullet dip..Is the way to go.. Eddie you know what im getting at.. ;)
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my buddy found the best cat bait I've ever seen before. I've tried a lot of stink baits over the years, but this one that smells truly horrible actually works. They come in to within 10 ft of the shore in a foot of water to get the stuff! You could net them if you were fast enough. He caught a 17 pounder 15 ft from shore with that bait once, and that's a big cat for Idaho. I wonder how that stuff would work in the south east? I fished lake Gaston in N.C. a long time ago and I couldn't tell any difference in what they bite on.
---there's a ton of mercury in the fish here due to all the past gold mining, but the fishing association book I have claimed that all you have to due is remove all the belly fat and you get rid of almost all of the heavy metals, I think it works, unless I'm crazy and just don't know it :P
--oh, and I'll second the notion of them being really good predators, we catch em on croppie jigs, and spinners all the time
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Dana, if you do catch yerself a catfish, easiest way to clean them is to just take a sharp knife, and go around the head and neck , and make a full circumference cut, then take a nail, and nail the head, of the fish to a board, plywood, plank, whatever, and take a pair of pliers, and grab the skin behind the head, and pull it off! then just cut the head off, and pull the guts out, and clean out the fat, and air bladder, and other tissue that don't taste good. Then if you want, you know you being a Yooper and all, ya can fillet them, or do it southern style if they are not too big, and just pat them dry, and dip them in an egg mix, and then dredge them in some corn meal, crushed corn flakes, or whatever you want, with some Cajun seasoning, and a little granulated garlic, and onion powder, and fry away! We used to catch a bunch of little ones about 8-10 " long, and fry them up in butter, when I was a little kid. We used to call them yellow bellies. They were usually not any bigger than that. But oh boy, oh boy were they ever good! :o
Wayne
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Thats how I used to clean bullheads wayne, nail em to a post and peel em with pliers. Bullheads have pink flesh like a trout.
The channels we tried were 8-10 lbers and like I siad they tasted like mud :P Now a perch or walleye ya can't go wrong with.
Like I siad ifin I catch an cats this year I will try them again, they should spawn in May some time around here.
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Easiest way to clean a catfish is to just fillet it. Never understood people going to the trouble of nailing a fish to a tree, pulling its skin off with pliers, etc. Just fillet it, skin the fillets, cut off the belly meat, and you're done- doesn't take long at all. You can fillet a smaller cat in a couple minutes at most. Dana, channel cats here are delicious, as good as walleye and perch (and I love walleye and perch.) Never ate a bad catfish including big ones unless it was one that came from the store. Get all the skin off of them, as it sometimes has a muddy taste.
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i too have seen some muddy tasting cats, and I fillet just like you said. They were out of Lake tecumpsuh (bad spelling) on a naval base in Virginia beach VA. The water was a little brackish I think, (since it met the bay a mile or so away) and it had a mud bottom. Big cats, gar, snapping turtles and tons of eels that would chew off all your bait really fast. I guess we only ate one cat out of there it tasted so muddy. Of coarse back then I might not have cut off the belly fat...? who knows
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I've had some muddy tasting ones, also. Usually during the rainey season, and then Largemouth Bass and Bluegills taste muddy, too. And I'm like hillbilly, I fillet catfish. Must be a Southern thing ;D.
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I like to hold them and eat the meat off the bones. I fillet some, but prefer them whole without the heads. Just the way I ate them when I was a kid. Eat the fried tails, and fins. Same with pan fish. I have had Specs that tasted muddy. Like Eddie said, depends on the water quality, at the time you catch them. Just put a little more Cajun seasoning, on them, and fry them up a little more crispy...... ::) Used to be a little restaurant, down south of me on 441, west of Boca or Ft. Lauderdale, and on Friday nights, they would have all you could eat, catfish, from Lake Okeechobee. Oh man, talk about good, and gluttony :o......I sure miss those days.
They would bring out a platter of those golden fried catfish, and you just started salivating They were not filleted, but whole without the head. That is generally the way you get them in the restaurants, but those are usually farm raised, and not much flavor to them.
Wayne
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Well will have to try em again, last time was about 30 years ago but I've learned to cook since then ;) :D
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A lot of guys fish off the bridge at one of our hydrolelectric dams here in Pa and catch the channels on Rapala minnows jigged in the boils below the turbines. Channels can be a very aggressive predators. its a lot of fun, haven't done that in a few years, usually bait fish the river banks now. Shrimp is an excellent bait.
Steve
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speaking of really good bait...when I get to a river or pond or whatever, I look for crayfish. If I find em, I will be catching some cats, every time. If you can find a ripe dead one, the rottenest crayfish tails you can find, or fresh ones is the best bait that I've ever seen. Some people even keep em and rot them at home specifically because the smell is so attractive that you often get a hit before your back hits bottom. Guess a bobber set-up would be smart. I can't keep fresh or rotten crayfish on the hook and I've used it in Ohio, N.C., and Idaho...give it a try, I'd like to hear about it
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A really good bait is, squid. It is tough and hard for them to get off the hook. It stays tough even after it sits in the Sun a couple of days.
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does squid bring em in like lightning? I'll have to give it a try. Would be nice to have a bait that gives me more than one chance to set the hook. Oh, I was meaning that by not being able to keep it on the hook that they chew it off rediculously fast, but yah, crawdads do tear off easy :'(
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The muddy taste is due to compounds with a stupid name geosmin, pronounced "gee-OZZ-oh-min". Translates from latin meaning (earth smell), think of how mud smells or how the air smells after a rain. It ends up in fish due mainly because of bluegreen algae and a few other bugs. We had to deal with that in tilapia production. The trick with tilapia (and farm raised fish in general, including cats) is to get them in cooler clearer water and don't feed 'em a few days in a row. Then ya gotta make sure they ain't eatin' their own poop, either. All fish have some of this in them and purging the live fish in fresh clean water flushes it out.
Now if you can just get those catfish to come up to the pumphouse and drink lotsa fresh clean water before inhaling your stankbait....
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so we can just throw em in the stock tank for a few days with an anti poop eating mesh setup keeping them away from the bottom? good to know :) If I lived where they were muddy, I'd have a tank with a bubbler for oxygen, and just put fresh water in it for the few days of decontamination. Then go get a big batch, get em home with a cooler full of water and there you go. As a kid I used to get em home alive with no water on cool evenings, but they only lived a couple days in tanks without any means of oxygen production whether it be algae or a bubbler.
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That's why I like to catch them in the river. The water is flowing and I wait till the rainy season is over.