We finally took a couple of channels last night about dark in the Mississippi.

Breuer's could probably have eaten them both, or pretty close to it.

Those were on cut sucker, and we had a decent eater-sized walleye on a leech under a bobber with a few more runs and some additional bounces on the bobber. We tried a pile of different things but most got ignored, until quite late in the evening. We are going back later tonight, if the weather holds. We are not normally night fishermen, but it looks like the cats are making that more of necessity. The guy next to us took a little flathead (they are ugly especially when little) and hooked into a monster carp on nightcrawler and that was about all the action we saw.

We are seeing more fish activity in the river now than was there before, including open-river pods of shiners and quite a few cruising carp plus some surface rollers and a few jumping fish; so there should be an increasing bite. The fish are there but are still pretty close mouthed at least to what we are offering. There is a surprising amount of surface feeding on cottonwood seed right now. If I could just figure out how to rig that as a bait...

Last night we had a bit of ragged bite early in the evening but only landed three cats, the biggest at about four pounds, and a decent sheephead. Two of the cats came on leeches, one on a wolf river rig with both a long dropper and a long leader and the other on a leech under a bobber.

Mike is thinking the cats are moving through up a little in the water column; so he has been rigging his leeches for that and there has been a little response to it to, including a couple of decent eater sized walleyes into the mix. He has been rigging with one of those wire units from a crappie rig to provide a standoff and is not getting any tangles casting that sort of three way rig, providing he keeps the leader just a bit shorter than the dropper, and he is running about a 20" dropper, too. That seems to be working, although nothing we have tried is working very fast. Part of it is probably that the channel cats are going into spawn about now, too.

We have both lightened up our lines and poles a bit down to 8 pound mono from the Power Pro we were using, on lighter casting rods with less weight; there isn't much current and there aren't too many snags there either. If one of us does get into a really good cat we are going to have our hands full. That should be a real blast if... That is the kind of trouble I would dearly like to get into. That would be some sport!

The largest of the three cats came on cut sucker, with the rod in a spike holder down in a hole that happens to be along the wall we were fishing from. The rod just plain doubled over and stayed that way, and I jumped for it. Unfortunately I was sitting on the butcher board laid across the bucket with the sucker I was going to cut up later. I upset the bucket, dumped the sucker down the hole, fell in it myself and poured about three gallons of water down into my right boot. We landed the cat anyway, but put him back quickly to try to raise enough water from the river to save the sucker. I ignored the boot to dry out on its own, but we didn't take time for a picture, but it was not a trophy fish anyway, probably about 4 pounds, a real good handful to unhook. Ended up keeping the sucker alive, though. And then Mike took his first almost immediately and we landed that one before even rescuing the sucker from the mud hole. We thought we were off and running but someone turned off the switch instead.

What scattered bite there was tapered off as it got dark, perhaps the cats moved on up the barge channel or something. There was a pretty good insect hatch just after dark, and we could see all kinds of dimples apparently of fish feeding on them, but no takers of any kind, no matter what baits we put where.

I am finding it very interesting that two of our last five cats have come on leeches, although all the hard strikes have come on cut sucker. Is anybody else using leeches? You don't hear much about them as catfish bait.

Wednesday night after the seminar I stopped down there and cast with the UL and the little jig for a while. Lots of dink smallmouths, some green sunfish that are always dinks, even if nobody ever bothered to tell them that (if they grew to the size of a muskie they would be attacking small boats), and one very nice carp -28"- which was quite a contest on the 5' UL with 4# line, there were a couple of sheephead, too, with the larger being probably between 2 and 3 pounds. Try landing a big carp without a net sometime. I could not get a grip on that fish and ended up shoving my needle nose down its mouth to lift it out of the water.

In the past couple of weeks we have taken fish of eight different species there, with respectable ones for the type in 5 of those. It's not that there isn't a bite there and some very respectable fish getting hooked in the process, it's just that we are finding the channel cats few and far between.

Other wildlife (non-human - this is in the city of Minneapolis after all, right along downtown in fact) included a beaver waddling behind me against the river bank on Wednesday night and last night a peregrine falcon took exception to a bald eagle and chased it all over the dam area, striking it a few times in the process. That went on for quite a while; the eagle just could not make good his escape. Mike tried to get some vid of that on his cell phone, but that didn't work out. There is also a very nice light show on the new 35W bridge, just not many catfish, although they seem to be picking up a little finally.

All fish are catch and release, except the suckers that get sacrificed to the river gods.

I like to use leeches when the bottom fishing is no good or when I don't feel like handling cut bait. I usually get good eater size kittys with leeches - 2-6 LBS

I was down on the river with Cole for a while tonight and we managed to catch a few Smallmouth Bass and one big Catfish. The fish hit a Gulp! 4" Sinking Minnow fished wacky style. I really had my hands full with that fish so I let Cole take over and bring it in. I figure it was about 8lbs.

I wouldn't mind hooking into more of the on the river. They really put up a fight!

Good fishing,

Corey Bechtold

If you can get Corey into a good catfish bite, he will love it.

They have been slow for me this year, with really only one good evening. I think I got more that one evening than all the rest of the year put together, and that was just 8 cats, but the biggest three were all about the same size as yours, and they hit like freight trains. There really isn't anything like when the channel cats play smash mouth.

Every once in a while a nice carp will also take a catfish bait, and that is fun, too. My partner and I have some 5 or 6 this year that went into the high 20's (inches), including a couple we couldn't land due to a high wall and a forgotten net. We are actually doing better on carp when we are catfishing than we are on the catfish... Somehow we aren't doing something quite right.

You're right Dutch, they do hit like a freight train! Was out fishing Pepin, middle of Sept. with my wife targeting silver bass and mooneyes. Got 2 mooneyes and one mean cat! Casted out a black home made jig and leech BANG something nails it. Only 4 test pound line, takes most of the line off the spool and drags us with the boat down the shore line. After 10 minutes of that the line breaks, never saw it. I retie with the same rig, fresh knot, go back to the spot. First cast, freight train on! Finally get it in the boat, channel cat! Guessing 24 inches.
Corey, ya they're a lot funner in the current.