New to Jugging

My buddy and I are getting into the jugging game! We fish taylorsville a lot for bass and decided we want to try to get some catfish together for some fish fry's this summer. We made some really nice noodles with pvc centers, caps on both ends, and a small eye bolt on bottom cap secured on the inside with a nut and gorilla glue. We will probably be fishing Taylorsville 99% of the time so my question is, how deep do many of you all set your lines? I have never done this before so any advice would be appreciated (especially any honey holes!) Thanks in advance.

I use lines of 3, 6, and 9 ft at Green River. I have a silly method in which I color coordinate the length with the color of the noodle. Yellow = 3ft; green = 6th ect... It makes it easy to figure out what depth they are biting and I use my depth finder to see how many feet of water I'm fishing.

It's a lot of fun.

TG

kybonehead im not an expert by any means but heres my advice from my experience. If your looking for large catfish (20 lbs plus) pm me ill help ya. Eating size catfish I fish my jugs on tville from 4 feet to 12 feet using fresh cut shad. using this method i have the best luck putting in at the van buren ramp and jugging the water about 30 yards from the bank. If you stand on the ramp and look right i jug from the second cove on the left to the ramp with awesome numbers of fish from 3 to 5 lbs. Just be VERY careful on that end of the lake it is very shallow and a ton of stick ups and big rocks to destroy a prop.Hope this helps

I use lines from 3-8 foot deep when I jug at taylorsville. What I usually do is put the jugs out then go bass fish in the same area so I can watch my jugs and fish at the same time. Normally I've been pretty successful in the first big creek in your right when you come out of settlers trace. You take that 90 degree turn after the no wake zone and head towards the dam. It will be the first big creek you come to. But watch out for stick ups as they are everywhere in there. I normally head about halfway back into the creek. Hotdog is my preferred bait as it's easy and the fish love it. Good luck and have some fun!

Thanks for the advice. I thought about cutting some hotdogs into 1/4th and mixing some koolaid powder in and letting it sit. I also have some old deer meat that I've thought about cubing and covering pretty good with garlic salt and letting it get right in the sun. There's also a small creek near me where i can get a bucket full of 3 inch bluegill to use. Thinking about going this sunday, will post a report if I do.

kybonehead if you get to settlers trace around 5am right now you will see all the big gizzard shad at the banks. just one or two throws of the cast net and youll have more than enough bait. im not sayin the other baits dont work but in my opinion its always best to use what they eat normally.

We always took a bag of [U]raw[/U] shrimp just in case we couldnt catch some shad. Frozen shad didnt seem to work near as well as fresh but the fish at taylorsville seemed to like shrimp pretty well. First night my brother and I tried jugging we caught a 32 pound blue up there and he was hooked. I dont eat em so i prefer rod and reel but its a good way to catch a mess.
Also once a thermocline sets up it would be a good idea to keep your baits set accordingly since they wont really go where there isnt oxygen.

I went jugging with some guys on Realfoot a few years ago and they used chicken breast soaked in cherry cool aid probably around 5 or 6' deep if not shallower. No really big fish but we were catching big numbers of them.

I guess I had the idea that catfish would usually be towards the bottom. Seems like most coves I was pulling into last week were in the 20 foot range. Are you all still setting the noodles anywhere from 3-10 feet or so in that depth?? We put a couple noodles together the other night and set them at 12 ft thinking they would still be off the bottom. Wondering if its just a trial and error kind of thing or what.

Channels should be moving up towards the banks in preparation for their spawn. I'd fish 5-10 foot on rip rap or broken rock areas. Just about anything will catch a channel cat.

I caught one on squid that I had leftover from a florida vacation. Stays on the hook real well.

[QUOTE=aps71285;555428]kybonehead im not an expert by any means but heres my advice from my experience. If your looking for large catfish (20 lbs plus) pm me ill help ya. Eating size catfish I fish my jugs on tville from 4 feet to 12 feet using fresh cut shad. using this method i have the best luck putting in at the van buren ramp and jugging the water about 30 yards from the bank. If you stand on the ramp and look right i jug from the second cove on the left to the ramp with awesome numbers of fish from 3 to 5 lbs. Just be VERY careful on that end of the lake it is very shallow and a ton of stick ups and big rocks to destroy a prop.Hope this helps[/QUOTE]

I fish the same exact spot. I run 5 ft drop lines in 6-9 ft of water. Fresh cut shad trumps all. Frozen shad has never worked for me. Fresh cut bluegill has been productive. Only other bait I have had great luck with is catalpa worms....they work everywhere. I typically catch fish in 3-8 pound range. Caught 47 in 4 hrs one morning before the limit was put in place. I could see guys on the bank shaking their heads in disgust ha ha. 47.....by myself! Fun was not the correct term. It was more like work. Had 2-3 flopping around in the boat getting lines all tangled up, couple more running across the lake. It was hectic. I was only running 22 jugs.

[QUOTE=Drew1233;555429]I use lines from 3-8 foot deep when I jug at taylorsville. What I usually do is put the jugs out then go bass fish in the same area so I can watch my jugs and fish at the same time. Normally I've been pretty successful in the first big creek in your right when you come out of settlers trace. You take that 90 degree turn after the no wake zone and head towards the dam. It will be the first big creek you come to. But watch out for stick ups as they are everywhere in there. I normally head about halfway back into the creek. Hotdog is my preferred bait as it's easy and the fish love it. Good luck and have some fun![/QUOTE]



Fished here last night from 7:30-1:30. Set jugs, started bass fishing back through the end of the cove and I caught a small bass and a 3 lber. Buddy caught a warmouth. By 8:30 we had a jug bobbing. When we started pulling it up it didn't feel real big, but ended up being a 19.5 lb blue. We caught 2 more channel cats, about 3 lb and 1.5 lb. Pulled hook on another as soon as we grabbed the noodle. We had a blast! Shad were skipping in the back of the cove so we were able to catch a few with a cast net. Thanks for the advice, plan on getting back out very soon!