My partner, Troy Hansen and I fished a cat fish tournament on the ICATS tour at East Okoboji Lake in NW Iowa Sunday. I’d say we had a good day. We weighed in our 6 fish limit (only team of 21 to weigh in a limit) for a total weight of 112 pounds. That’s 6 channel cats with an average weight of 18.6 pounds. First place finish. Second place weighed in 5 fish for 58 pounds
We pre fished the weekend prior and the Friday and Saturday prior without a single bite…not a bite. We contemplated just going home Saturday night but since we were 5 hours from home, we stuck it out. Good thing too. Sunday morning the wind actually died down enough we could get into a bay that had been wind blown for probably 2 weeks. We couldn’t even fish that cove prior to Sunday.
I just had a feeling about that bay. When we pulled in there, we marked a few fish on the side imaging and saw some carp so we thought we’d better try. Within 15 minutes of anchoring, we had 3 fish in the boat for over 50 pounds. We were ecstatic. We were dumbfounded at the first bite. All I could do was point at Troy’s rod and grunt. He hesitated for a second but landed a 20 pounder. We knew we were home. We stayed in the cove (about 300 yards wide) for the entire day. About half the field of cat fishermen anchored out from us and watched as we landed between 15 and 20 cats. It was a blast. We were culling 15 pounders.
We were using cut bait and fresh seemed to be the key. We had some live gills, perch and yellow bass that we were cutting as we went. Anything out of the cooler didn’t work as well. We had the bait, we found the spot and we got the job done. What a fun day. We’ve had days like this fishing on Lake Mendota but it’s a lot different when it happens on tournament day.
On a side note, we cleaned up on some big perch Friday and Saturday evening while fishing for bait. Oh and those wings on the barby, that’s a typical hot lunch on out boat. We get some funny looks when the smoke start rolling outa the boat. But once they get down wind, they understand.
Here’s some pic’s…couldn’t hold up all 6 so we got a pic of four. and the one Troy is holding up we named ‘shoulders’…looked like a cross with a flat head.
L8R…Ken
