By DAVID RAINER
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
The ripples emanating from the sides of the 2-foot-long
piece of pool noodle was just what Joe Dunn hoped to see.
It meant there was something attached to the line that
dropped some 15 feet into the murky waters of the Alabama River near Camden.
During the dog days of summer, this fishing tactic is what
Dunn prefers because the heat makes it unbearable to crappie fish in hopes of
catching seven or eight keepers. The same goes for bass fishing.
So, Dunn turns to the plentiful catfish that inhabit
Alabama’s many rivers, and lets the jugs, or noodles in this case, do the
fishing while he enjoys a restful night of sleep. If he’s ambitious, he’ll run
the 20 or so jugs during the night. If not, he’ll head out at dawn to find out
what’s been biting.
Catching bait might be the only real work involved in “jug”
fishing.
“The predominant bait on Millers Ferry is going to be shad
that you catch with your cast net,” Dunn said. “But skipjacks (members of the
herring family) are another excellent bait. It’s a little harder, sometimes, to
catch skipjacks. Most people use Sabiki rigs and go behind the power house to
catch the skipjacks. But sometimes there’s another way to catch them. If you’re
on the river, sometimes you will see skipjacks chasing little river minnows or
small shad. You ease over into that area, and when they come up to feed, you
throw your cast net and load it up with skipjacks. We did that just the other
day with the cast net.
“The key is good, fresh bait.”
Dunn said if you’re planning to do a little tightlining for
catfish before you head back to camp to get out of the heat, the skipjacks will
stay alive for a little while in the livewell. If you see a couple floating in
the livewell, it’s best to get them all out, put them in a plastic bag and get
them on ice before they degrade.
Dunn says the best way to deal with leftover skipjacks is to
freeze them as soon as possible.
“Freezing skipjacks in water doesn’t work well,” he said.
“When you thaw them out, they’re all mushy and just don’t work well. I found
out if you put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them individually before
putting them in freezer bags, they work a lot better. That’s a big plus.”
When Dunn is targeting flathead catfish, he tries to catch
small bream to bait the jugs. Flathead, also known as yellow cats, prefer the
bait to be live and swimming.
“Most of the time, flatheads are going to hit something
live, whether it’s a 3-inch bream (taken on hook and line) or a skipjack you’ve
just caught in the cast net,” he said. “If you have a good live skipjack, you
just hook him the middle of the back so he can swim and stay alive.
“If you’re looking for a mess of small fish for a fish fry,
just use those small shad and thread them on the hook. If you’re keying on
bigger fish, you’re better off with a live bait, even your bigger blue cats
like live bait.”
Most people tend to shun keeping a larger blue cat because
the flesh is not as suitable for consumption as any size flathead. However,
Dunn said large blue cats can be delicious if they’re prepared correctly.
“The key is learning how to clean them to where they taste
good,” he said. “It’s best to bleed them. I cut the tail off and throw them in
the splash well. When I clean them, I get all the red meat off, and then I soak
the meat in an ice-water slush. You soak it and get all the blood out, changing
the water when needed to get that meat snowball white.
“Then you fry it, and it’s good. I’ve had people tell me it
was the best blue cat they’ve ever eaten.”
Now Dunn is not saying he can make big blue cats taste like
a flathead, which doesn’t seem to lose any appeal to the palate the larger the
fish gets.
“I fried some flathead for my brother, Bubba, and he kept
asking me, ‘What did you do to this fish? What did you do to this fish?’” Dunn
said. “I didn’t do anything to it. It was just the fish. The flathead is just
the primo catfish catch out of the river.”
Dunn said a couple of techniques seem to work when he’s
specifically targeting flatheads. He focuses on the inside bends in the river
and rock walls. At the start of the bend, most will have a small sandbar. He
said the flathead like to hang out at the drop-off behind the sandbar.
“They’re sitting below that bar where the current is running
over the top of them, waiting on that bait to come to them,” he said. “I also
like to fish where a cut is coming into the main river where the depth goes
from 12 to 14 feet down to 30. They like to hang underneath that drop-off. But
big blue cats like those spots too.”
Even though Millers Ferry has a reputation as a fantastic
crappie fishery, Dunn thinks catfish are overlooked at times.
“This is a super good catfish fishery.”
Dunn said the hot weather pattern for catfish starts around
the middle of June and usually runs through October, depending on when we get
enough of a cold front to lower the water temperature.
“The hotter it gets, the more you stay in the main river
channel,” he said. “I use the noodles because you use a lot longer lines, 15 to
20 feet, and it’s easier to wrap the lines around the noodles when I take them
up.”
When he’s targeting the larger fish, Dunn uses a tarred
nylon twine for the main lines with a 1½-ounce lead, swivel, monofilament
leader and a 5/0 circle hook.
Dunn said the largest flathead catfish he’s hauled in at the
Ferry weighed 65 pounds, and the largest blue cat he’s seen weighed 55 pounds.
For “fry ’em whole” small fish, he uses double-hook rigs
with smaller hooks and smaller shad for bait.
Dunn takes a break from catfishing during the winter to head
to the deer woods. The water gets high during the winter, but he’s back on the
river fairly early in the new year.
“We usually start on February 17,” he said. “We’ve always
started on that date because that’s my oldest son’s birthday. We would come up
to the river and get our jugs ready. But that time of year, you go up in the
shallow flats. The catfish will move into the shallow flats before anything
else.”
In February, Dunn changes his “jugs” to 20-ounce drink
bottles and 1½- to 2-foot lines with a ½-ounce to 1-ounce weight, swivel and
foot of 20-pound-test monofilament leader tied to a 3/0 circle hook.
“That’s when I go in places like Gee’s Bend, Buzzard’s
Roost, River Bluff, Alligator,” he said. “You just get in the backs of the
creeks and throw your jugs out. You can wear them out in the springtime doing
that.”
Alabama’s creel limit on catfish is determined by size. For
catfish under 34 inches there is no limit. Anglers can keep one catfish 34
inches or longer in most areas of the state. Several river basins – Perdido,
Conecuh, Blackwater, Yellow, Choctawhatchee, Chipola and Chattahoochee – are
exempt from the size limit. Also, it is unlawful to transport live catfish 34
inches or longer beyond the boundaries of Alabama.
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Joe Dunn shows off another nice blue catfish taken jug fishing on the Alabama River at Millers Ferry.
Photo by David Rainer
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