With school starting back
and football about to kick off,
I’ve only got two things on my
mind: catfish and hunting season.
Sure, I can’t wait to check
out the football team’s new staff
and style of play, but the only
“spread” I have on my mind is
the spread of jugs I’ll be watching
float down the Mississippi
River on my next catfishing
trip. Well, there is the spread
of decoys I’ll have out in front
of my dove stool in a few short
weeks, but we’ll cover that one
another day.
Many fishermen get tired of
trying to beat the heat by this
time of summer, but it couldn’t
be a better time to get on the
water for some great catfishing.
If you have a boat, you a can
easily stay cooled off and fill the
coolers up with enough whiskerfish
to pack the freezer with
filets.
I spend most
of my free time
after turkey
season chasing
catfish. I enjoy
all methods of
fishing for these
slimy delicacies.
When the
hand-grabbing
season ends
in July, that’s when my fishing
buddies and I hit the rivers
and streams for jug-fishing. It
couldn’t come at a better time
either. It’s just too hot to sit
still and tightline, and trotlining
greatly reduces your mobility.
That’s the coolness of jugging,
you can let the jugs float and
find some shade to hide under
or motor around and keep the
wind in your face.
There are magnificent catfish
waters all over the state, and
plenty of them are right down
the road from our campus. One
that has recently become one of
my favorites is Tibbee Creek near
West Point. All of the Tenn-
Tom waterways are full of cats,
and from July until September,
the jugging couldn’t be better.
A quick tip you can take
to the grave with you when it
comes to jugging is shallow is
usually better. My fishing crew
spent many of wasted hours cutting
lines and untangling snags
from fishing deep. We now
fish all of our jugs from 4-6
feet deep. In smaller tributaries
like Tibbee, we have most of
our success dropping our jugs
off upriver of the sandbars and
letting the current drag them
back across the bars. The cats
like to lie up on the drop offs
and the edges of the sandbars,
and feed on baitfish that float
by. Another big learning curve
we had to get around was using
live bait. I grew up using live
bait, because I was constantly in
search for flatheads, which feed
almost exclusively on live bait. I
still like to chase these big tasty
cats, but just not with jugs. I
jug fish for filets. With that said,
cut shad is hands down the best
bait we’ve found, and we’ve tried
many different types of bait.
If you really want to have
some fun, I suggest trying out
the Mississippi River at least
once in your life. I go every time
the wife will let me go for the
weekend. First and foremost,
you need to be very careful on
the Big Muddy. It may look big
from the bridges, but it’s a whole
new world when you motor out
to the middle of it. Wear your
life vest and keep an eye out for
barges and floating trees. There
are also rock dykes, or wing
dykes, that are all up and down
the river on each side. When the
water level is slightly higher than
the dykes, and you run your
motor over these invisible walls,
well, bye-bye lower unit.
Our method of fishing the
Mississippi is similar to the
smaller waterways. We concentrate
the majority of our fishing
upriver of the sandbars. On this
mammoth river we will start
much farther upstream. We
usually drop jugs about one to
two miles upriver
of the sandbars,
motor back down
to the bar and
tightline from
there, waiting on
our jugs to float
by. The glory
of this is we can
wade out into the
water on the sandbars and stay
cool.
We also fish behind the aforementioned
rock dykes. These
dykes create huge swirling pools
on the downriver side, and offer
fertile feeding grounds for hungry
cats. It seems odd fishing
four feet deep in 50-plus feet of
water, but it works. We caught
over 50 fish on two days of fishing,
and we really weren’t fishing
that hard.
Always remember safety first
when navigating any body of
water, but you have to be extra
careful on the Big Muddy. The
waters are as swift as they come,
and nobody wants to end a stellar
fishing trip on a sad note.
Brandon Parker is a senior
majoring in communication.
He can be reached at
[email protected].