Cattin the Chain 2017

[Whiskerbent]

I know there is a mega thread below, but it's not exactly getting much action.  Mods feel free to delete this if it's inappropriate.

 

Anyways, who's been out lately?  I haven't had a chance to get out since 1/11.  At the time I had tried to get out onto Koetter, took the wheeler along shore up to the entrance from Cedar and there was essentially open water up to shore, with a bunch of spots where snowmobiles had broken through.  I ended up fishing east of 22 on Mud/Cedar and found a few cats that ate red glow and chicken liver.  I thought I had hit the jack pot because the vex was lit up with activity, dropped down the camera only to find massive pods of bugs with very minimal fish.  Waited until after dark for more fish to move in, but they never did.  Anybody run into this out there? 

 

I'll be out on either long or horseshoe tonight.  If you see a red Honda rancher with a clam X2 stop in and say hi.  I'll be drilling a lot of holes

[Bass Thumb]

Yeah, bumping that 2015 thread didn't go over so well.

 

I ran into that bug hatch a few days ago in the deep basin of Mud while searching for cats back there for the first time. It was nuts. The bugs rose off the bottom around dusk and covered the entire bottom 10-15' of my flasher screen out in 30' of water. My spoons and Raps would just disappear into it.

 

I didn't catch any cats, but did find a couple eater walleyes out in the middle of the basin that were hungry for chicken liver spoons! They were aggressively crushing around right above those bugs just as they were lifting off the bottom, at that time covering only the bottom 6-12" of the screen. 

 

What did those bugs look like? Were they zooplankton possibly?

[Tom Sawyer]

I would say it was a specie of Daphnia.

[Whiskerbent]

Long legs and narrow body, almost like a mosquito without wings.

[Bass Thumb]

What color and size?

[Whiskerbent]

Couldn't tell.  30 feet down so I had color turned off.  Size is deceiving without a reference point

[Whiskerbent]

Fished Long this afternoon.  Only ended up catching a few cats because I got side tracked by a massive school of crappies I saw on the camera when I was glassing a hole for cats.  Darn those rough fish 

 

the cats I did catch came on chicken liver 6 feet off the bottom in 17 fow