Post Cold Front Blue Catfish

We had a cold front blow through last week bringing some storms and quite a bit of rain. It also dropped the air temp about 15 degrees which I certainly can't complain about. Conditions like this can make the fishing tough though. I set out to Watts Bar to do some catfishing the next day after this front had passed. I made a few assumptions before I hit the water. I figured the fish would be really deep, very close to bottom, and would probably be more likely to hit a smaller bait. These assumptions proved to be correct.

I started out attempting to drift a ledge in 60 feet of water. The wind made this difficult to do. It was blowing directly upstream and offsetting what little current I had to work with. I was essentially sitting still. Because of this, I made my way downstream and let the wind and current hold me directly off a point where I have caught some big fish before. The move paid off. I quickly hooked into a nice blue pictured above and the striper pictured below.

After spending some time on that point, I decided to go back upstream and drift/troll my way down the ledge I had started on. As I made my way down the ledge, I paid close attention to the depth so that I could keep my baits suspended just high enough off the bottom so that they wouldn't get snagged. I didn't get much action but I did hook into this brute shown below. He took me on a fun ride in the kayak.

After making a couple passes down that ledge, I decided to move back upstream to try to get out of the wind. I fished along another ledge in 70 feet of water doing the exact same thing as before. I just made my way down it with my baits as close to bottom as possible. It wasn't long before another tanker slammed the bait. This fish wasn't as long as the other but it was several pounds heavier.

After about 6 hours on the water, I decided to call it quits. I didn't end up getting very many bites but the quality of the fish I caught made it worth the trip. The day went exactly as planned. I had small quarter to half dollar size chunks of cut skipjack suspended just off the bottom on three of my rods. On the fourth rod, I had a bigger chunk of skipjack set about 3 feet off the bottom. All of my big blues and the striped bass hit the smaller bait that was placed just off the bottom. As Hannibal from the A Team would say, "I love it when a plan comes together." Look for the video to be published soon.