Downriggers for Catfish?

The eight pound downrigger ball was holding my bait at the desired depth as the water rushed past at close to 4MPH. Suddenly a fish struck and the line released. After a good fight, the target of the exercise was brought over the gunwales. Not a coho, or a lake trout. Not even a walleye, but a big channel cat. Have I discovered a way to troll J-plugs in lake Eerie for monster cats? No, just an interesting new way to utilize existing equipment in the quest for better catfishing.

Often, the key to successful fishing is bait placement. I know that sounds a bit simple, but allow me obfuscate it by way of explanation. See, fish don't have mass transit systems, they don't have SUV's and they don't even have mountain bikes. They live in a much more three-dimensional world than we do, yet they have no elevators. For a fish to travel ten feet is often quite a journey; to travel thirty or fifty or more is like a road trip. I understand about seasonal migrations, and open water schooling fish, and all the other exceptions. My basic point is that to catch fish, the precision of your bait placement is often MUCH more important than the bait itself. I once heard a great axiom from a famous television fishing personality (Roland Martin, maybe?). Whoever it was said something to the effect that [in bass fishing] you can have the exact right lure, presented at the exact right way at the exact right time of day; but if its in the wrong spot you'll catch nothing. Conversely, if you put a spark plug directly in front of an active largemouth, he'll likely hit it.

As it turns out, a great deal of our fishing tackle, equipment, and techniques are geared toward the primary purpose of putting the bait where the fish are. Think about your boat, your fishing weights, your anchors, etc. The technique described here is a method that I developed to help precisely place baits for large river catfish.

I'll start by describing the problem. There is a very large snag on the edge of the main river channel. In this particular cast, it is an entire cottonwood tree, roots downstream, in 20-25 feet of water. After taking several very nice channel cats from the perimeter of the brush with more traditional methods, I started to probe deeper into the cover. My efforts yielded even bigger cats, but bait placement began to be a real issue. Estimating the location to drop a 2-ounce sinker so that the current would drift it to the right place before it settled in 25 feet of water proved to be a challenge that cost me many rigs. I increased the size of my weights almost to the point of being silly. That managed to increase the amount of money I lost every time I got hung up. And of course every time I snagged up, it had the possibility to disturb the fishing.

I finally hit on the solution, drawing back to my days of trolling downriggers on the St. Croix for midsummer pike and walleye. I didn't have a downrigger, and didn't want to go to the bother of purchasing cannon balls or anything. I did have some 6oz mushroom-type decoy anchors, and I had some clothespin-type releases for my planer boards (TEASER: look for an upcoming article on using planer boards to catch cats!). So I tied the 6oz weight directly to the end of the 80lbs Tuf-Line on one of my muskie rods, and set out for the snag.

When I got to the snag, I idled the boat into position directly over the location I wanted to fish. I lowered the weight (on the muskie rod) straight down to the bottom and left the reel in freespool, and placed the rod in a rodholder. I then moved the boat upstream to an anchor position. Once anchored, I tightened up the line to the 6oz weight and put the muskie rod back in its holder. Now, I had a 6oz anchor exactly where I wanted to place my bait; and I had a heavy line from my boat to that anchor. The line had about a 30 degree angle on it, coming more or less straight upstream. So now I rigged up a circle hook on one of my cat rods and clipped on a 1oz rubber-core about 18" up from the hook. Once baited with fresh cut-bait, I half-hitched a rubber band to the line about 12" above the rubber core, and half hitched the other end to a large snap swivel. I clipped the snap onto the 80lbs Tuf-line and sent the bait down to the waiting anchor.

Using this configuration, the bait slides down the heavy line to the anchor, and waits for the bite. The rubber band breaks when the fish is on (with circle hooks, he's generally already hooked). The fish is brought in, the hook rebaited, and sent down on a new snap swivel. I've literally caught half a dozen good sized cats without moving the weight, with all those snap swivels just piling up down there.

One of the problems associated with this technique is that the extra line in the water can be an obstacle when fighting big fish. Incidentally, I did try pinch-pad type downrigger releases, but found the rubber band approach to work better.

This method allows extremely accurate bait placement in difficult environments. It also shows how angling knowledge from multiple species in many different situations can be put into play to solve challenging technical problems. Since that first experiment, I've used downrigger balls up to 8 lbs to hold bait in specific locations. Varying weights, releases and boat positions gives a variety of presentation options.