Bad Bait Blues: Trolling with Live Bluegill
In a perfect world, good bait would always be plentiful and easy to catch and every fishing trip would be filled with memorable catches. Unfortunately, I live in the real world and good bait can be hard to find during certain times of the year. I spent several hours this past week in search of my favorite catfish bait, the skipjack herring. Countless casts at several different locations produced a grand total of zero skipjack for my trouble. Since I still wanted to do some catfishing, I had to move on to an alternative bait choice.
Bluegill are one of my favorite fish to catch. Truth be told, I probably spend as much time ultralight fishing for bluegill throughout the year as I do in search of monster blue cats. There is just something appealing about ultralight fishing. I don't know if it is the fact you never get skunked, that everything feels big on ultralight, that 50-100 fish days are a reality every day of the year, or just the simplicity of it but it is one of my favorite pass times. While bluegill are a blast to catch, they don't tend to make a very good bait for trophy size catfish around here. I have had days where either live or cut bluegill worked well, but those days have been the exception not the rule. Nevertheless, when times are hard, I always find myself going back to bluegill with the hopes that this will be the time they produce a monster blue cat for me. That was my hope when I fished this past week.
After catching some live bluegill, I set out to do some trolling on Watts Bar. Trolling has become my preferred technique when there is no current flow. It allows you to cover a lot of water and put your bait in front of as many fish as possible. On that particular day, TVA didn't turn the generators on until 9am. Because I was fishing several miles downstream of the dam, I figured I would be off the water by the time the current flow reached the area I was fishing.
I started out trolling along a drop-off. My live bluegill were suspended 3-4 feet off the bottom as I moved around 0.5mph along the structure. I was fishing the main breakline where the main river channel starts to come up. The bites came early and often. This drop-off was loaded with small blue cats in the 2 to 5lb range. I was fishing with four rods and could barely keep all my lines in the water. After quickly being cleaned out of bait, I caught some more bluegill and went back to fishing.
As much fun as the constant action was giving me, after being cleaned out of bait for a second time, I decided to move about a mile downstream and fish along a bar to try to find some bigger size fish. By that time, the current had caught up to me which allowed me to drift. I drifted for another hour and caught a few more small blue cats before bad weather forced me off the water.
While the size of the fish I caught left a lot to be desired, I ended up catching a ton of fish and had an absolute blast that day. Here is the video footage of all the action.
Bluegill are one of my favorite fish to catch. Truth be told, I probably spend as much time ultralight fishing for bluegill throughout the year as I do in search of monster blue cats. There is just something appealing about ultralight fishing. I don't know if it is the fact you never get skunked, that everything feels big on ultralight, that 50-100 fish days are a reality every day of the year, or just the simplicity of it but it is one of my favorite pass times. While bluegill are a blast to catch, they don't tend to make a very good bait for trophy size catfish around here. I have had days where either live or cut bluegill worked well, but those days have been the exception not the rule. Nevertheless, when times are hard, I always find myself going back to bluegill with the hopes that this will be the time they produce a monster blue cat for me. That was my hope when I fished this past week.
After catching some live bluegill, I set out to do some trolling on Watts Bar. Trolling has become my preferred technique when there is no current flow. It allows you to cover a lot of water and put your bait in front of as many fish as possible. On that particular day, TVA didn't turn the generators on until 9am. Because I was fishing several miles downstream of the dam, I figured I would be off the water by the time the current flow reached the area I was fishing.
I started out trolling along a drop-off. My live bluegill were suspended 3-4 feet off the bottom as I moved around 0.5mph along the structure. I was fishing the main breakline where the main river channel starts to come up. The bites came early and often. This drop-off was loaded with small blue cats in the 2 to 5lb range. I was fishing with four rods and could barely keep all my lines in the water. After quickly being cleaned out of bait, I caught some more bluegill and went back to fishing.
As much fun as the constant action was giving me, after being cleaned out of bait for a second time, I decided to move about a mile downstream and fish along a bar to try to find some bigger size fish. By that time, the current had caught up to me which allowed me to drift. I drifted for another hour and caught a few more small blue cats before bad weather forced me off the water.
While the size of the fish I caught left a lot to be desired, I ended up catching a ton of fish and had an absolute blast that day. Here is the video footage of all the action.
