Cattin' the Chain '10

[Hory]

Thanks for the report! I guess I'll probably be waiting until next weekend for my first solo run at the Chain

[TrapMan13]

May be heading out to the chain a little later this afternoon. Anyone else going to be out there? I will be targeting Cats and Crappies

[so haaad]

Wish I could join you, but this thing called work keeps getting in the way!

[harvey lee]

How was the ice and slush trapman? I am thinking about going Wednesday.

[TrapMan13]

Didn't make it out there today, Got caught up in a few things... I will also be out there tomorrw. We will be on cedar. Red Dodge Dakota, Tan Ford Taurus. Stop in if you end up over there.

[IceHawk]

Tom the slush is froze all over. Rough as a cob but the ice is in great shape.

[DTro]

Yeah, I bet it's rough out there.

Hopefully I can make it up there as much in Feb as I did the past couple of months.

Keep the reports coming!

[catchnothing]

I was out there for about 3 hours on sunday in the slush and did pretty well on cats and walleys in 24ft of water. I've heard glow yellow was the ticket but my trusty glow red frostee did wonders. Good luck everyone!!!

[harvey lee]

Tom the slush is froze all over. Rough as a cob but the ice is in great shape.

Thanks. Hopefully tomorrow I will get there.

[icehousebob]

Hey Harvey, I'm thinking about heading out to the Meth Hole tomorrow afternoon and into the evening. When do you think you might be there? I drive a dark blue Siverado with a topper. Maybe we can co-operate on exploring for fish.

[harvey lee]

I will be there around 1pm. I will have a white Chevy ext cab with a HSO decal in the back window.

I will be fishing in a black Canvas Craft portable.

[TrapMan13]

How did you all do? We fished a hole we found previously (last wednesday) yesterday (wednesday) . It started off slow but then about 230 my graph went from empty to red from the bottom (30) about 4 ft up. I fished and fished and couldnt get anything. Finally I switched to a small crappie jig and full crappie minnow and immediatly hooked one. Up comes a.... WALLEYE. Well for the next 45 minutes as fast as I could put the line down I was pulling up another walleye. (they were only about 8" nothing keepable) then about 4 the graph went dead till sunset. FINALLY cat on! from sundown for the next 2 hours me and my buddy pulled about 20 cats through the ice. About 830 we started markin some fish 5 - 10 ft. under the ice. Finally the crappies were around. We left the lake with 13 crappies 12" and over and 10 good eatin cats will post pictures later

here is a picture of a couple of the cats from the inside of my ice house

the crappies took up the pail so the cats went on the floor!

Ill get the pictures of those slabs on a little later tonight here

Good Luck! and keep fishin!

Chad

[aanderud]

Nice work, Chad. Sounds like you have a honey hole there, multispecies action and no time to eat a sandwich even!

Keep up the good posts. I will get out there Sunday if I'm lucky. Not sure though, have to spend some time with the fam.

[fishuhalik]

Nice! I love the pic of the kitties on the floormat. Only a real icefisherman puts his slimy cats on the floor of his truck!

[harvey lee]

I hit the Meth hole today.

Marked many fish and at times they were stacked almost 5' deep. Tried almost every lure I had along and also used chicken liver and even tried panfish jigs with euro larvae.

They would fly up to the bait and just sit there. If one moved his bait at all, they would drop back to the bottom.

I finally would lift my rod when my lure turned red and did catch some using that method. They would not move the rod tip at all. They just sucked on it and you had to lift the rod tip to see if they were hanging on. Sometimes I just lifted hard and got them that way.

very tough bite. Might be that there has been to much pressure in that hole and they are becoming a bit hook shy. Fished water from 25-31ft.

Nice meeting and fishing with you Bob.

[icehousebob]

Tom, it was good to meet you and thanks for the use of your auger. It was embarassing to get there and discover that mine was safely at home in my garage. It was sure frustrating to have all those fish under us and not being able to get them to bite. See you at Cool Cats.

[JimBuck]

Made it out today...pretty slllooowww all around for me. Marked plenty of fish in many spots but only hooked into a few after dark. The majority of my action took place from 6:30 until 8:30 when I had to leave. Nice day out there.

[tcumd]

went out last night, fished 38 fow. marked a lot of fish after dark...couldnt get many to connect. Ended up with 2 small crappies and one cat.

Casey

[wooduck26]

Anyone tried Stink bait? It seems like in the summer the smaller cannels (like the size I cought in the chain a few weeks ago) really like to eat the dip bait.

Anyone tried using it through the ice?

[FishinVeteran]

Hello gentlemen,

I've been following this thread for awhile and have finally talked my girlfriend into a trip out there this weekend. I was wondering if anyone could suggest a place, (if there is one,) that I could safely bring our 16' king crow fish house out onto on Friday night. Generally I look for at least 16" of stable ice, but I know that river conditions are a little different. Are there any places on the chain with less current but an occasional fish to be caught? Thanks again and I look forward to getting to know some of you!

[pushbutton]

go to the "get togethers forum" and click on the cool cats thread and you will find a map to the meth hole. there will be more than enough ice. there will also be fish, but it looks like the bite has been a little tight lipped lately. dont be afraid to try different techniques, if it is because of pressure unconventional is maybe what is needed. catfish generally are not that picky. during the winter they have an extremely light bite though.

[DTro]

Ok, so Aanderud and I went on a scouting mission yesterday.

He purchased a new Navionics chip at Shackbash’s benefit and decided to put it to good use. We picked out a spot that neither of us had been to before, then using a Satellite image from Bing we were able to find a decent spot to get on the lake with a sled.

We got to the spot we wanted to fish and started popping holes. It didn’t take long to figure out that it was stacked with fish. We weren’t exactly sure if they were cats or not, but we figured they probably were. You just never know when you are fishing a totally new spot, so I dropped down the Marcum 380 camera and confirmed our beliefs. There were times when I had up to 7 cats on the screen at one time!

It was weird because the fish weren’t acting negative, yet they were not biting at all. I would watch them on the camera, come up pretty fast looking at the bait, sometimes even bumping it, but never even open their mouth. A little bit after dark we did finally end up catching about 10, but they were on the small side for sure.

As I mentioned before, I’m thinking that the bite people are seeing out there right now is a seasonal pattern. You will no doubt be able to find some hungry fish here and there, but not the kind of bite we see earlier in the year. This bite we had yesterday, plus the camera interaction kind of confirmed that, as there were fish literally everywhere, and pressure was a non-factor as there were only a couple of holes and pretty thin ice (5-8”). Just to give you an idea how many fish were there, they were stacked solid from about 22’-35’

I got a few short video clips of the fish on the camera that I will try to upload tonight.

I don’t plan to hang it up, but at the same time will have lowered expectations for now.

[Borch]

There is about 24" of ice out in the meth hole area. Be prepared to go slow as it's very rough our there all the way out to the spot and beyond. After trying one promising spot last night that didn't pan out we ended our evening there. Ended up with 8 cats with most being smaller but two that were very nice. Saw the same pattern Dtro reported. Lots of fish down there but not much biting. We had a half hour period that we hooked most of the fish we caught last night as they seems to turn on for a bit.

The hot lure was a 1/16 oz or 3/16 oz Lindy Rattlin Flyer in glow red tipped with a chunk of fathead. I think this lure caught all but two of our fish plus a few that came unbuttoned on the way to through hole.

[Rick G]

Now I feel better knowing that others had a slow time of it out there this weekend. I spent Fri and Sat nights in the perm and chased the kittys around all day Sat and Sun from sun up till well after sun down and only got 20-30 cats all weekend between two people. All the fish I got were caught on the 1/16 pink frostee spoon tiped with a head of a fathead. We found lots of fish in quite a few ares of the chain but like others before me have said the bite for the cats was slow but we did do pretty good late nights for crappies and a few eyes.

[FishinVeteran]

Awesome guys!! Thanks for the quick and helpful response! I usually try to target little northerns when I bring her out because they are easy to find, require minimal effort to catch, and provide enough fight to keep her squealing like a little kid. These catfish just look like a hoot as well, so I thought it might be worth a shot.

The map makes things a LOT more clear, thank you pushbutton! I do have a handful of other questions if you gents would be willing to lend a hand further; Is there much snow out there right now to contend with, or is it just dirty ruts and bumps that are giving people trouble? Does anyone else spend the night out there and if so is there a night bite at all? Are there any trouble spots on the way out to the meth hole to avoid as far as ice thickness is concerned?

I've also read on previous pages that ice buster bobbers hanging a minnow off bottom was producing well for awhile. Is that still the case? I equate bringing my girl out on the ice to bringing out a little kid, and I know how long she'll be interested in jigging a spoon before she crawls into a bunk and starts watching a movie. I figure if they are still taking bobbers down I can keep at least keep an eye on her bait for her while she's snoozing. (Her immediate reaction to crawling into a bunk.)

Thanks again guys! I really appreciate all the help!!

[DTro]

I don’t want to disappoint you FishinVeteran, but with the way the bite is right now, I’ve seen grown men ready to hit the sack and watch a movie instead let alone the short attention span of a child

Even when the bite is at its best, the bobber will rarely go all the way under and stay there. If you’ve read through these posts, you will find that even the slightest twitch will be all it takes a lot of times, and if you miss that twitch you might miss the fish as well.

Actually part of the reason I enjoy fishing for these cats, is the challenge it poses trying to catch them. A “no brainer” at time it can be, be mostly is not.

Having said that, there is a TON of great info here….Good Luck!!

[FishinVeteran]

Thanks DTRO! You seem to be the man when it comes to this catfishin stuff! We've really enjoyed your video's and I doubt I'd have gotten the thumbs up had it not been for them! To be honest, I quit fishing to catch fish a long time ago when I discovered I'm really not any good at it, so if we catch a couple cats that would be awesome, but a lack of fish won't ruin my experience.

[Borch]

There are tons of fish there. But the catching is pretty tough right now. Most of the cats we got last night were 8+ feet off bottoms. We saw cats midway up in the water column a lot last night. Sometimes these are your best best to get to bite. We had bobbers go under 3 times last night and hooked one. Lets just say they didn't stay under long.

Not much snow out there now. Just the rutted up frozen slush from earlier.

[DTro]

Thanks DTRO! You seem to be the man when it comes to this catfishin stuff! We've really enjoyed your video's and I doubt I'd have gotten the thumbs up had it not been for them! To be honest, I quit fishing to catch fish a long time ago when I discovered I'm really not any good at it, so if we catch a couple cats that would be awesome, but a lack of fish won't ruin my experience.

It sounds like we share the same attitude.

I regularly get outfished by whomever is in the house with me (although it was a draw last night ) So, "the man" I am not, but I just have learned a lot over the years and it’s nice to maybe try and shorten the learning curve for others. I am, however happy to hear positive feedback on the videos. I enjoy making them. Thanks

[FishinVeteran]

You guys are AWESOME! I step away from the computer for an hour and come back to responses already posted! I've got about a year left of college before I'll finally let the woman tie me down with marriage and such, but I've already been looking at where I'd like to settle down in MN. Originally I was really interested in the Alexandria area, but the job market sucks and housing is ridiculous! I recently stumbled upon the St. Cloud listings and the situation seems wonderful by comparison. Add to that the vast amount of different fishing opportunities and friendly neighbors and you may just be looking at a future St. Clouder!

I think some days the fish gods smile at us and others they smile at your best friend sitting a foot away from you. I don't think it has as much to do with skill sometimes as just plain luck. Its all just part of the game and it really makes you appreciate it that much more on the days when you are the one in the hot seat