I've been on a good channel cat bite on the St Croix the last couple of nights. The St Croix walleye guys have been posting reports and many of them have been picking up cats drifting and pulling crawlers and minnows on bottom bouncers. If they could catch cats that way it made sense to me to mirror their presentation and just substitute cut bait for the bait to lure the cats.
I started the night at 1930 trying to catch some bait but all I could catch was smallmouth - they were all over my nightcrawlers before even the sheepshead could get there. I gave up trying to catch bait at 2015 and decided to use my leftover sucker from last night.
I've been trolling modified 3-Way rigs upstream at a slow crawl using a large chunk of cut sucker for bait. I started trolling about 2030 and hit my first channel at 2053 a chunky 21" channel cat. By the time I got him in and taken care of I had drifted almost back to my start point. I moved back downstream and decided to do another troll along the same line. At 2150 this monster channel (32" length X 19.5" girth) just hammered my outside rod. I thought he was going to rip the rod holder right off the boat.
Lucky for me there was a guy camping on an island near where I caught this channel cat. I motored over to his campsite and he took a couple of pictures for me and I had that beautiful fish back in the water right away. I was pumped from that fish and decided to head in on a positive note. I only chased flats for an hour and a half and had two nice fish. I wonder how long I can milk this channel cat bite. I'm back out again tomorrow.
This year I have really grown to have a new found favoritism for channels. They really are a beautiful fish. The colors on your big fish are really nice. The yellow slowly fading into that big white belly.
Here's my favorite cat pic of the year so far, only 23" but HUGE belly. Not near as big as yours but still a really nice looking fish!
Beautiful St Croix Channel Cat 7-24-08
