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ERIC SHARP: Mighty fine fishing for cats
Catfish are abundant and big in Michigan
April 15, 2004
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Michigan anglers usually associate catfish with cane poles and Southern drawls, but this state has a huge and virtually untapped population of big, hard-fighting channel cats and flatheads.
Video producer Don Sweet of Monroe, a.k.a. Cat Man, hopes to boost their profile in the Great Lakes State when he holds the country's richest catfish tournament May 22 out of Lake Erie Metropark. More than $50,000 in cash and prizes will be awarded anglers who will try to bring in the 10 heaviest whisker-faces.
To promote the event, Sweet, owner of Visual Films, invited Monroe angler Bert Cummings and me to fish with him. We ran in Sweet's boat to a canal off Lake Erie near Bolles Harbor, where the water temperature of 65 degrees was 23 degrees higher than on the open lake.
It was spectacular. In five hours on the same 100-yard stretch of water, we caught and released 51 channel cats. Most were two to six pounds, but a half-dozen ran 10 to 15.
"When I tell people that we just about always catch 25 or 30, they look at me like I'm nuts," Sweet said. "There are a huge numbers of channel cats and even a lot of flatheads in Michigan, but not many people fish for them.
"Catfish are real popular in the South because there are so few other species to fish for. You have bass, crappies, bream and catfish. A few places have striped bass and walleyes, but not very many.
"Here, we have so many glamour species that when I tell people about this tournament, they go, 'CAAAAATFISH? Are you serious?' But the tournament is going to open some eyes to a great fishery."
Sweet won the national catfish championship last year at the Santee Cooper Reservoir in South Carolina, which he called "the mother of American catfishing waters."
Michigan allows anglers to take 10 channel cats a day (minimum length 12 inches), and five flatheads (minimum length 15 inches). The state-record channel cat is 40 pounds, and the record flathead is 47 pounds, eight ounces. But Sweet, who has caught a 35-pound channel cat in Michigan, is convinced that much larger ones are waiting in the St. Clair, Detroit and other big rivers for people who target them with specialized techniques and gear.
"We came to this canal because we're going for numbers today," he said. "If we were trying for big fish, we'd go to a couple of spots on the Detroit River, or at the mouth of the St. Clair near where it dumps into the lake."
Sweet and fishing buddy Ron Moore prepared baits about as fast as Cummings and I could reel in fish. At one point, four rods had fish on, but we could get to only three because the fourth person was busy with the landing net.
Sweet tried baits that included shad entrails, cut shad, chicken livers and chunks of sliced carp. The dripping mess they create on a cutting board is probably one reason some anglers prefer not to fish for cats. The fish showed a marked preference for the entrails and carp, but Sweet said live crayfish usually work as well or better.
Sweet uses circle hooks, and 99 percent of the fish are hooked in their rubbery mouths, which drastically reduces the numbers that die after being caught. He releases all of his fish by choice, but it's a good practice for anyone catching catfish in the Great Lakes, where the fish might be loaded with chemicals.
The hooks were huge by freshwater standards -- 4/0 to 8/0 -- but these fish have enormous mouths. When Sweet makes a video about fishing for giant blue catfish in places like the Ohio River, he uses tuna-sized 14/0 hooks baited with 12-inch whole shads, he said.
For Michigan catfish, he likes 20- to 30-pound test line with a two-foot, 50-pound leader. In big-cat country, he switches to 50-pound line and 80-pound leaders.
"These things aren't line-shy, and you have to be able to stop them and keep them away from structure," Sweet said.
With four fishermen, we set out six, 7 1/2-foot bait-casting rods and two, eight-foot spinning rods, with four-ounce sinkers about 18 inches above the bait. The rods were Shakespeare Ugly Stiks, with flexible tips but a lot of backbone. Even with the drags tightened enough that it required some effort to pull the lines off the reels by hand, 10-pound-plus fish were strong enough to take lines easily during the fights.
We fished by casting the baits out in a fan around the boat and waiting for a bite. Early in the day, about half of the fish, and most of the big ones, came out of the 24-foot-deep channel at midstream. The rest came from the four-foot shallows along the shoreline.
As the day progressed, the temperature dropped and more fish came from shallower water, which either warmed faster in the weak sunshine or cooled slower in the brisk wind.
Sweet has made catfish videos in prime waters of the United States and South America. In Peru, he said, "We caught a 110-pound catfish called a jau that the locals said was a baby," and in Argentina he set a record for the sorubim catfish at 108 pounds.
But there are still heights to scale. He dreams of someday catching a giant Asian catfish in Indochina, which can exceed 250 pounds. And when he dreams in Technicolor, Sweet sees his rod bending under the weight of a Eurasian wells, which supposedly reaches 500 to 700 pounds.
How many hush puppies would you need to fry up to go with one of those babies?
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com.
Catfish are abundant and big in Michigan
April 15, 2004
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Michigan anglers usually associate catfish with cane poles and Southern drawls, but this state has a huge and virtually untapped population of big, hard-fighting channel cats and flatheads.
Video producer Don Sweet of Monroe, a.k.a. Cat Man, hopes to boost their profile in the Great Lakes State when he holds the country's richest catfish tournament May 22 out of Lake Erie Metropark. More than $50,000 in cash and prizes will be awarded anglers who will try to bring in the 10 heaviest whisker-faces.
To promote the event, Sweet, owner of Visual Films, invited Monroe angler Bert Cummings and me to fish with him. We ran in Sweet's boat to a canal off Lake Erie near Bolles Harbor, where the water temperature of 65 degrees was 23 degrees higher than on the open lake.
It was spectacular. In five hours on the same 100-yard stretch of water, we caught and released 51 channel cats. Most were two to six pounds, but a half-dozen ran 10 to 15.
"When I tell people that we just about always catch 25 or 30, they look at me like I'm nuts," Sweet said. "There are a huge numbers of channel cats and even a lot of flatheads in Michigan, but not many people fish for them.
"Catfish are real popular in the South because there are so few other species to fish for. You have bass, crappies, bream and catfish. A few places have striped bass and walleyes, but not very many.
"Here, we have so many glamour species that when I tell people about this tournament, they go, 'CAAAAATFISH? Are you serious?' But the tournament is going to open some eyes to a great fishery."
Sweet won the national catfish championship last year at the Santee Cooper Reservoir in South Carolina, which he called "the mother of American catfishing waters."
Michigan allows anglers to take 10 channel cats a day (minimum length 12 inches), and five flatheads (minimum length 15 inches). The state-record channel cat is 40 pounds, and the record flathead is 47 pounds, eight ounces. But Sweet, who has caught a 35-pound channel cat in Michigan, is convinced that much larger ones are waiting in the St. Clair, Detroit and other big rivers for people who target them with specialized techniques and gear.
"We came to this canal because we're going for numbers today," he said. "If we were trying for big fish, we'd go to a couple of spots on the Detroit River, or at the mouth of the St. Clair near where it dumps into the lake."
Sweet and fishing buddy Ron Moore prepared baits about as fast as Cummings and I could reel in fish. At one point, four rods had fish on, but we could get to only three because the fourth person was busy with the landing net.
Sweet tried baits that included shad entrails, cut shad, chicken livers and chunks of sliced carp. The dripping mess they create on a cutting board is probably one reason some anglers prefer not to fish for cats. The fish showed a marked preference for the entrails and carp, but Sweet said live crayfish usually work as well or better.
Sweet uses circle hooks, and 99 percent of the fish are hooked in their rubbery mouths, which drastically reduces the numbers that die after being caught. He releases all of his fish by choice, but it's a good practice for anyone catching catfish in the Great Lakes, where the fish might be loaded with chemicals.
The hooks were huge by freshwater standards -- 4/0 to 8/0 -- but these fish have enormous mouths. When Sweet makes a video about fishing for giant blue catfish in places like the Ohio River, he uses tuna-sized 14/0 hooks baited with 12-inch whole shads, he said.
For Michigan catfish, he likes 20- to 30-pound test line with a two-foot, 50-pound leader. In big-cat country, he switches to 50-pound line and 80-pound leaders.
"These things aren't line-shy, and you have to be able to stop them and keep them away from structure," Sweet said.
With four fishermen, we set out six, 7 1/2-foot bait-casting rods and two, eight-foot spinning rods, with four-ounce sinkers about 18 inches above the bait. The rods were Shakespeare Ugly Stiks, with flexible tips but a lot of backbone. Even with the drags tightened enough that it required some effort to pull the lines off the reels by hand, 10-pound-plus fish were strong enough to take lines easily during the fights.
We fished by casting the baits out in a fan around the boat and waiting for a bite. Early in the day, about half of the fish, and most of the big ones, came out of the 24-foot-deep channel at midstream. The rest came from the four-foot shallows along the shoreline.
As the day progressed, the temperature dropped and more fish came from shallower water, which either warmed faster in the weak sunshine or cooled slower in the brisk wind.
Sweet has made catfish videos in prime waters of the United States and South America. In Peru, he said, "We caught a 110-pound catfish called a jau that the locals said was a baby," and in Argentina he set a record for the sorubim catfish at 108 pounds.
But there are still heights to scale. He dreams of someday catching a giant Asian catfish in Indochina, which can exceed 250 pounds. And when he dreams in Technicolor, Sweet sees his rod bending under the weight of a Eurasian wells, which supposedly reaches 500 to 700 pounds.
How many hush puppies would you need to fry up to go with one of those babies?
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com.
