Sinkers and catfish

A strange event on the river the other day.

We were fishing the upper river above McAlpine in daylight hours with a dam release of 22 feet. I was catching cats and using a 3oz no roll sinker. My fishing partner was using an egg sinker of about 2 ounces and getting no hits.

I caught about 4 fish in a row when I suggested he switch to a no roll sinker. I gave him one of my 3 ounce no rolls and he immediately started catching cats.

Who would have thought that a change in sinker style would make that much difference.

Neither one of us caught anything huge, but they were all nice fish in the 5 to 7 pound range.

Oh yeh. Partner caught the ugliest catfish either one of us have ever seen. Kinda hard to describe but the thing was just plain ugly and somewhat deformed looking.

[QUOTE=Tyme2fish;378887]Partner caught the ugliest catfish either one of us have ever seen. Kinda hard to describe but the thing was just plain ugly and somewhat deformed looking.[/QUOTE]

I haven't fished the river a lot, but the few times when I did fish it and caught fish, reached down to lip them, etc, it just always felt different than reaching down and lipping a fish out of Cumberland and Dale...with the river fish I always wonder what the fish has seen and what it has come into contact with, etc...on the flip side though I have seen a few ugly fish come out of both lakes I mentioned too, in fact about a year ago I witnessed the same pathetic, deformed, scarred, bruised and battered large mouth caught four time in the same day at Dale. It had a decent size to it but it was pathetic looking. If we caught it one more time that day we swore we would stuff it full of minnows so it would leave us alone.

[QUOTE=Tyme2fish;378887]Oh yeh. Partner caught the ugliest catfish either one of us have ever seen. Kinda hard to describe but the thing was just plain ugly and somewhat deformed looking.[/QUOTE]

I think they're all ugly, but they sure do taste good!:D

[QUOTE=Tyme2fish;378887]A strange event on the river the other day.

I was catching cats and using a 3oz no roll sinker. My fishing partner was using an egg sinker of about 2 ounces and getting no hits.

Maybe the extra oz. of weight got the bait deeper. I prefer the no-roll style for bottom fishing and egg style for down rods.

Joe