Blue Cat Intel

[Latimeria]

Anyone here have experience targeting Blue Cats?  I'm camping with the boys this weekend and going to try and see if I could get really lucky with catching a fat slob of a catfish.

Otherwise, I'll use standard catfish techniques trying to get them... basically freshwater mud marlin fishing.  lol

[spideyjg]

Blues are more predatory than channels. Live bait or freshest cut is best.

Despite being the apex predator in the lake they hide deep in cover during the day. If you aren't losing tackle, you aren't in a good location.

Big cats can be line shy also.

Jim

[Chris]

Presentation depends on where your fishing. I've killed a lot of blues under 10lbs on live Crawdads. Leave the pinchers on, they get hit harder. Or so it seems. I've had good success suspending them too. 4ft under a float in 6-10ft of water.

In Missouri and Alabama we'd set jugs with cut shad and bluegill and catch blues up to 25lbs and small flatheads.

[spideyjg]

+1 to Chris it depends where you are what is available plus what is legal.

In the Imperial Valley you can use sunfish family members but not anywhere else.

Dead ocean fish are fair game anywhere but are not really the catfish steady diet. However in lakes where people use macs all the time they have learned it is food but can be skittish about it.

Small cats bloody bait such as chicken livers can be money. Larger fish want cut bait.

Jim

[BenCantrell]

Larger fish want cut bait.

This has been my experience with blue cats. Big chunk of gizzard shad is the way to go.  If you don't have gizzard shad, any oily bait fish should work fine.  I've caught them on fillets off dinky channel cats when I can't find other bait.

[Eric H]

I'm no expert on blues but keep it simple, not much to it.

If your in still water, just fly line a fresh mak chunk.

You will find them exactly where you'd think they'd be.

They do grow to be over a 100 lbs so keep that in mind.

I caught a 2lber on an inflated night crawler while targeting trout, they're pretty cool.

[Latimeria]

Lots of hours fishing, but no fish.  I played aroud with a 6 or 7 pound bass for 2 days and almost had him on the drop shot, but put my time in for a Blue Cat....

Oh well, the weekend was great concerning friends, food and booze.