Iced Cats...

www.fishingclub.com

Fried catfish is one of my many vices and until my cardiologist tells me to stop indulging, I plan to eat it as often as possible...with corn bread!. The challenge for a northerner, however, is availability of fresh catfish fillets. With most of the waters up here still locked in ice nearly two-feet thick, my only two sources of fresh catfish is my local grocer and the Famous Dave's Barbeque just down the road from the office.

And since buying fresh fish, to me, is an admission that I can't catch them on my own, I refuse to buy any species of fish I can catch on my own. The two exceptions are tilapia and yellow fin tuna.

So now you understand the predicament I faced last Friday-hankering for catfish and frustrated that I couldn't catch them on my own.

Or could I? I had fished a flowage chain of lakes in west-central Minnesota a decade or more ago and found cats and crappies doing the same thing-coming in at a variety of depths and taking a jigging spoon tipped with a minnow head or even a small crappie minnow.

So I stopped down at Kurt Beckstrom's office that afternoon to see if he was up for a day of chasing cats through the ice. He was, as was his son Gus. Beckstrom is editor of North American Fisherman magazine and is prone to living on the edge.

We met on the ice the next morning, following a two track about a mile out in to the lake to a point that rose from 40 feet of water before topping out at 12. I drilled a line of holes along the edge of the break, then punched a few on top as well.

We found nothing in the first hour.

So we drilled another line of holes further out the break, and this time found schools of fish that were seven feet thick and so dense they blocked view of the bottom on the sonar. The first cat of the day took a 1/16-ounce Northland Tackle Buckshot rattle spoon tipped with a minnow. It was small, maybe a pound, it at least told us we were on the right track.

Oddly, the school scattered after landing the fish and we searched extensively over the next hour trying to relocate them. Failing, we settled back down in the area that produced the one fish and planned to grind it out.

The fishing wasn't fast, but we began picking up fish faster as the day warmed. The key was locating the fish on sonar and then presenting the bait precisely in front of them. The bites were soft.

By day's end we had the makings of a catfish feast! Iced cats...who would have thought?

Steve