The walleye season has come and gone, so now what? Maybe just hit the same old panfish hole like always?
Nope, not this year, this year we decided to do some traveling and chase those "other" species. First, we headed south to chase some channel cats.
Catfishing is usually overlooked in the summer and unheard of in the winter. They are quite the fish, they school like crappies and fight like trout. When you do finally find the school there will be fish on your locator 10-15' thick. And they are always on the move so it requires drilling a ton of holes.
For tackle, use your typical walleye gear like buckshot spoons and jigging raps loaded with minnows. Although the fight of the fish is amazing, they hit very softly, so many times we just set the rod down and watched the tip to slowly start moving. What followed the great day of fishing was a bucket full of catfish we had to learn how to clean. They were really worth the work as the catfish and hush puppy fry that night was a treat none of us had ever tried before.
Then I got the news that lake superior had "some" ice in front of Duluth so we were headed north to try our luck at some lake trout and salmon. It ended up being the typical story, you should of been here yesterday.
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Although the day before we got there quite a few 30+ inch lake trout were caught, we hardly marked a fish and every angler we talked to had the same luck as us. Oh well. We still got to get out on the big lake, and that is always an adventure. We traveled very light over the busted up sheets of ice, checking the thickness a lot. We fished many spots between 45 and 75 feet, but we really needed to go out to the 100 foot mark. The only problem is that was a little too close to the open water than we wanted to be. So we settled on making it off the lake safely and coming home without a trophy. There is always next time.
