Fishing with a Trotline

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Channel catfish and blue catfish are commonly caught on cut bait, such as described above for gar, and they will take live bait like worms, minnows, or crayfish as well. Flathead catfish feed almost exclusively on live bait. In my experience waterdogs, the gilled stage of the tiger salamander, work great, as well as a bluegill or sunfish about 5 inches long.

The skill involved in trotlining involves being able to handle all that line and all those hooks with facility, using the right bait for the right fish, and especially learning the water so you know where to set your line. Only experience can make you really good at it, but even a beginner will catch some fish. The thrill involved in trotlining is harder to describe.

The best comparison I can make is to say it's a lot like Christmas when you were a little kid. You recall how you lay awake most of the night, wondering what you would find under the tree the next morning. Trotlining is much the same. There's no telling what you're going to find when you go to run that line. And you don't need to be a little kid to get high on the anticipation.

Fishing Stories

Consider the time last summer when my wife and I put out a limbline with a dozen hooks in Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico. The next morning when we rounded the bend we saw that limb shaking like it was caught in a high wind, and the float was bobbing and jerking on the water like a nervous duck. Our excitement was contained only by the careful intensity with which we brought the line in, hand over hand. We had three nice channel cats at 3 to 8 pounds, and a 10 pound carp. We promptly filleted them and put them on ice. Another fish had enticingly straightened a stout 2/0 hook in making his escape. You try to straighten a 2/0 hook sometime, then tell me how big he was!

Consider Dan Grider who caught a world-record blue catfish in 1989 in Lake Texhoma, Oklahoma. The 117-pound fish was caught on a jugline weighted to the bottom. "Jug and weights and all," Don Grider recounted to me, "he towed the boat around for an hour before he got himself tangled up in another trotline and finally gave it up."

Consider next Pick Bland of Lake Livingston, Texas and his 134 pound Flathead Catfish. Bland told me that a 134 pound flathead is a fish of considerable power, and that landing the fish had more in common with sharking than catfishing."With trotlines," he said, "for any fish over fifty pounds, you don't want to pull on them too much-that's how the big ones get away. You tie an extra jug or two to the line and let them wear themselves out." He said that once he saw what he had with that 134 pounder, he tied four one-gallon jugs to the line. "He took their down and stayed under for eight minutes before he came to the surface and bellied up," Bland said.

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