Ohio River Cats
August 22, 2008 by admin · Comments Off
Armed with stout conventional tackle and baited up with one-pound gizzard shad, Bruce Midkiff obviously had big cats in mind. An Ohio River cat fanatic who has since passed away, Midkiff found exactly what he was looking for that day in 1999. Fishing alone, he managed to land a 104-pound blue catfish, which stands as the state-record blue for Kentucky and Indiana.
Midkiff lived in Owensboro, so he did the bulk of his catfishing in the nearby Cannelton and Newberg lock-and-dam tailwaters and the Cannelton pool of the river. That said, great catfishing spots are spread along the entire Kentucky portion of the Ohio River, which extends more than 700 miles and forms the state’s entire northern border Most blue catfish are caught down- stream of Cincinnati, with the highest densities through the lower reaches of the river. Channels and flatheads abound throughout the river.
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Hellgrammites: best live bait in Kentucky?
July 14, 2008 by admin · Comments Off
Above left: By turning rocks with you feet just upstream of a seine
Grampus, Go-Devils, Conniption Bugs, Hellgrammites…. Call ‘em what you want. Fish think the larvae of dobson flies are candy, so I simply call them great bait.
Hellgrammites, to use the proper common name, abound in cool-water streams through much of Kentucky. Fierce-looking critters, with oodles of legs, big pincers at one end and a hook at the other, they inhabit rocky runs in cool, clear streams, spending most of their time tucked under rocks.
Hellgrammites may stay hidden under rocks because virtually everything that swims will eat them, which I’ve witnessed every time I’ve used hellgrammites for bait ina cool-water stream. Smallmouth bass typically are the official sought-after species, but somehow the rock bass, largemouths, channel catfish, bluegills, longear sunfish and other fish never get that message (which I don’t mind at all).
My brother-in-law, Jerry Perry of Danville, grew up in Frankfort, fishing Elkhorn Creek and other streams in Franklin County. Perry is strictly a stream fisherman, and he fishes almost exclusively with hellgrammites (plus the occasional soft-shell crawfish that shows up in his seine
