A Neat Little Trick

When I'm all set up, I love to see the end of the rods bobbing a little bit.  This means that my gill, minnow, or bullhead is down there calling in a flathead.  When I'm fishing with creek chubs and sucker minnows, my joy is often stifled by a big thump on the pole followed by perfect stillness.  Channel cats can't seem to resist coming in and giving these minnows a good pounding.  I rarely catch them.  I'll leave it out there for several minutes after the thump to see if they'll come back, but I inevitably end up pulling in a minnow that  looks like Lindsay Lohan after a night in the clubs.  With a limited amount of live bait, I go a little crazy when this happens.

One slow night I was fishing in the basin just up from the bridge when a thought popped into my head.  I had been using Berkley Gulp Alive 4" minnows on a jighead earlier in the day.  Thinking about how those channels can't resist nailing a minnow dancing around on the bottom, I wondered if I could call one in with a jig and plastic minnow.  I figured the scent that they inject into the Alive baits could only help.  I grabbed one of my 7 foot St. Croix Premier spinning rods and went to work.  I dropped the jig right down behind the boat and got to aggressively jigging the bait on the bottom.  With a combination of big hops and violent shakes, I imagine I was stirring up the bottom and sending some pretty good scent downstream.  I kept this up for about 10 minutes when an angry 8 pound channel hit the jig like it just said something about his mama.

The fight was good, especially because I picked him up just 8 feet directly below me.  When I got the grumpy old channel in the boat I tough talked him a little bit because I had outsmarted him with my little plan.  I would guess that maybe 1 in 10 of my bright ideas actually works.  When you get those though, you've got to try them because it sure feels good when they do.