Go to Jewel and ask the fish counter if they have any smelt. Find out they don't.
Drive home, call grocery stores along the way to find none of them have smelt either and Domnicks says they don't even order any. Stop and buy baby-wipes because Pondboy asked me to....
Baby-wipes???? We ARE fishing, right!?! Why the baby-wipes????
OH!!! That's why the baby-wipes! We're cattin' and carping tonight.
First things first, we tie on a heavy lead sinker to a rod strung with braid. This is the base of the Wolf River Rig without a three-way swivel. Then a Palomar knot is tied 16-18" up from the sinker around the loop end of a snelled hook, the same thing is repeated on another smaller and shorter snelled hook a foot or so up from the first. At this point you think about bait.
There is dough bait, stink bait, pool bait, dip bait, some kind of stringy stinky stuff, chicken livers, and night crawlers. Any of the above goes on either hook and gets cast out into the lake. We were also thinking that we might catch carp if there was no cat bite so we had some corn to bait and chum with.
Our rods were in rod holders with copper bells clamped to the tip of the rod. This way when a cat slams the bait the bell rings like crazy. When the bite is subtle the bell rings too so you know when to pay attention for a hook set.
Tonight no carp were caught but Dan got a pleasant surprise in the form of a far more juvenile channel catfish than he expected to be in this lake. Poachers routinely come and take fish in the night. I think I scared one off with my flashlight.:-)
Carping and catting is fun. Messy but fun. We spent about four and a half hours listening for the subtle difference in tones of bell as made by the breeze, the bluegills, or in the one instance that night a fish. It'll take a weekend, a 5-Hour Energy, and a lawn chair for me but I'd do it again. I like all types of fishing I've tried so far and catching cats sounds like a nice way to spend a summer night to me.
Tonight no carp were caught but Dan got a pleasant surprise in the form of a far more juvenile channel catfish than he expected to be in this lake. Poachers routinely come and take fish in the night. I think I scared one off with my flashlight.:-)
Dan and his channel cat and Dan and his crazy headgear!
Carping and catting is fun. Messy but fun. We spent about four and a half hours listening for the subtle difference in tones of bell as made by the breeze, the bluegills, or in the one instance that night a fish. It'll take a weekend, a 5-Hour Energy, and a lawn chair for me but I'd do it again. I like all types of fishing I've tried so far and catching cats sounds like a nice way to spend a summer night to me.
