Big Blue Cats

[sailfish]

what is the secret to catchin' Big Blues on ky and barkley? got a friend that wants to tackle one and i volunteered to take him. thanks for any help.

[basstrucker123]

dont know myself but a local down at ky told me to drift cut shad in 40 ft of water along river channel bottom bouncing did not try it but he had 6 that day 1 40 lb blue i helped him take out his pontoon he was by himself and an older fellow so i ask how he caught then that is what he told me hope this helps some basstrucker

[Danny]

He is probably right.

I know when we were on KY last thursday, we launched out of Kenlake, and we checked the fish cleaning station. The barrels were full of the remains of nice big blues. Someone must be catching the fire out of them.

Then on Barkley Saturday, we were marking lots of fish on the drops right off the river channel, but have no idea what they were as we could not get bit. Well we did catch one small LM, but that was it.

Good luck,

Danny

[sailfish]

thanks . we will go "fishin'". not necessarily catchin'.

[kc]

I haven't caught any big blues but I have taken my kids out on the river channel drops on Barkley with shad we caught in a cast net and we have landed many good-sized blues. Using 3/4 or 1 oz egg sinkers we just drop the shad straight on the drop and we usually catch them around 20 - 25 feet deep. The drops I gravitate to are the mouth of creek channels entering the main lake. I just use my trolling motor to hold but if it is windy you can forget that idea. Doing this we have caught blues up to 12 lbs and they average 4 or 5. It can be a blast with kids because you can catch just about anything with threadfin shad on the drops. Maybe going deeper you can catch the bigger ones. ???

kc

[sailfish]

many thhanks, k.c. those fish sound big enough to me. besides, don't have a net to handle anything larger. come to think of it, i better invest in a new one. back to the store.

[kc]

The trick is getting shad. In the fall they bunch up on the surface back in the creeks and can be easy to cast net. But this time of year they tend to be down and I have a hard time getting shad. I have thought about catching skip jack on small baits but that would be time consuming. Maybe other baits such as chicken livers or night crawlers could work but that is where my catfish prowess starts to wane. I just know if you can get shad they will bite.

kc