Any of you catch catfish while bluegill fishing?

[Damon Toney]

I'm finding that the catfish sometimes outnumber my bluegill catch rate. At any rate I suspected there were bigger catfish in my waters and went on a handlining trip a couple week ago:

[carl hendrix]

Damon;; Im constantly catching kittie fish when I go after blue gills !  then again;; I also catch bass; crappie; stripe; also !  these little foam bugs I make; I call a rascal;; tipped with a small piece of nite crawler;; have hammered some fish for me for the last few years

[carl hendrix]

neat little video you have on hand lining catfish Damon;;  especially like your outboard motor!

[Slip Sinker]

nice video Damon...

great way to put the fish in the cooler though on minimum tackle.

yes we catch some lunker cats fishing for the panfish.

heres a couple the past two years focused and fishing for the gill

the channel cat was caught on Carl's Rascal on a dropshot with worm bit... just short of Master Angler

the upper right pic was a BullHead Earl caught while we were positioned off a steep break with drop shot and crawler... the was a Master Angler for him.

[Damon Toney]

Nice! Never caught a bullhead, don't even know if they're in my area. Every time I catch bluegill and use for bait I don't catch many cats.

[Lord of the Fly , Rods]

 Damon, I have been on spot  just wearing them out then all of a sudden the bluegill turn off , well I continued fishing and and have put some big catfish in the boat  and after this intruder was taken out of the area the bluegill came back and started biting again. . The biggest catfish I have caught on a flyrod doing this weighed 14 pounds.  LOFR

[Damon Toney]

14 pounder on what sized fly rod?

[Lord of the Fly , Rods]

Damon, my main battle

[Lord of the Fly , Rods]

Sorry , that didn't post right,  Damon , My main Battle Rod is a 25 year old Browning Graphite 8 -1/2 ft  #6 weight , it enough to pull the big bluegill out of the brush and you never know when you are going to catch a big cat.   LOFR

[Damon Toney]

lol, Browning. I was wondering: Goodness John Browning made fly rods too, lol.

[David, aka, "McScruff"]

Ill catch channel cats when worm fishing near the bottom.

[Damon Toney]

Yeah, that's about how I ended up finding where the cats were hiding.

[David, aka, "McScruff"]

During the summer the gills move away from shore to deeper water. These sites are creek channels, drop offs and humps/holes, mostly.

I usually have a a line down while Im jigging or spin fishing, and the cats will come to the worms. Its maybe the one problem with earthworms (if you can call it that) - they are universally taken by all fish.

And I never mind the catfish - its my favorite fish to eat.