Nick: Hey! What's up? You are here today with Nick the Informative Fisherman. Today we are going to be discussing Beginner Catfishing and what I mean by Beginner Catfishing is this segment is just for Channel Catfish and Bullhead Catfish. There is a whole variety of catfish out there in the world and the rigs can vary quite a bit, but today it's just bullheads and channel cat.
This is a very basic rig, what this is, is a sliding rig. This is your slider, slides up and down the line. You have a numerous choice of weights, I choose the pyramid weight here which is of 2 ounce. Depending if the water is the tidal water, which means the water moves in and out with the current, you would want to use a lot more weight. If you want a light, you can use a 1 ounce weight, a round weight and what I mean by those is you have your round weights here, ball weights which roll across the bottom. Here the round weights and if you are fishing real deep, you can go with a heavier weight to get it down there or anything else for that matter.
Now your slider is placed above your swivel, which means you have your slider that goes the line runs through your slider and your weight hooks on to the side of it just like a swivel. Your swivel comes here just below the slider which blocks the slider from getting down to your line, so when the fish pulls, there is no friction, there is no tension for the fish there. So they don't feel the weight and you actually feel the bite. And from there your line hooks on over the swivel, the swivel pops open right here, let me show you. Pops open, you can slide your line on and off, your swivel pop shut and you slide that over and you can see that you have your hook here.
The hook choice that I prefer for channel catfish and bullhead catfish is 8 size number 4 hook. I pick up the pre-snelled hooks from Wal-Mart, or wherever you maybe able to pick up your fishing supplies. I like number 4 hooks that are already snelled on and snells just for type - not just tied on to the hooks here, size 4 is a good size hook for either of those species of catfish.
Okay, now the line that you are using for these type of catfish, I prefer nothing less than 8 pound test, lot of people will fish a 4 and 6 pound test and try to play the fish out a little bit better, but when you are getting started, it's best to use a little bit stronger line and all my knots are Palomar knots. I will post up another segment about how to tie the knots otherwise I might take too much time right now. But 8-17 pound test depending on, if there is really large catfish, you use the higher test line. Test means the line strength, when they say 14 pounds then -- that's the full, full strength of the line.
Right here, I actually have on 14-pound test. Now the actual rod and reel -- people can catch catfish on a variety of rod and reels. Any reel you want to use as long as it supports from a stronger line anything above 8 pound test, if your reel supports it that's fine. You can use surf rods, bending rods, baitcasting rods, anything you want to use as long as it's a least to medium action, medium to heavy action. You don't want to use light action rods like little trout rods or crappie rods because a good catfish can just snap one of those rods on you or snap the line you are using.
Now for your bait. The most standard bait and commonly used bait for people who are learning how to catfish in the beginning, is Nightcrawler Worms. I will try to pop the lid off here for you, to get a good look at them. They are bigger worm versus like bluegill or crappie you would use red worms or little pieces of nightcrawler but when you are Catfishing, I prefer nightcrawlers and the worm is fairly large, you don't want to use the whole worm. I would say no more than half. You don't want to completely cover your hook to where the catfish has a tough time getting themselves hooked on there.
Another thing they have on the market are these dough baits, Magic Baits what they call. I am going to find these in lots of stores and it comes in a little chunk. It's like a little chunk of dough and you actually put your hook in the center and you can smash the dough in and around your hook to where it's real firm on there.
Depending on the lake or river wherever your are using, I found a lot of success with these here and I have also found a ton of success with nightcrawlers, a lot of different variety of fish will bite your nightcrawlers, not too many of them will actually bite this, just catfish. So if your looking to catch a variety of fish, use nightcrawlers. If you are going for just catfish, you can switch over these nightcrawlers dough baits or they have also a blood, a blood bait, dough bait which works pretty good for channel catfish alone.
Okay, now we have made it down to our spot. I am here with Jose (ph) today, he is a friend of mine. Alright, like I say, we are using nightcrawlers. We don't want to use the whole entire nightcrawler to cover up the whole hook. We want the catfish to really work at it. So I am actually just going to pinch him in half, just like so and use about that much and stick this part back in the box.
Okay, so now we have our sliding rig, as you can see it's sliding up and down on the line there, our swivel and then our snelled pre-hook size 4 on here with the nightcrawler bundled up and the tip of the hook, just sticking out, just a bit, just like that. Open, and go right, just like it -
Here we have a double drop-shot, high little leader with the swivel on the bottom and the pyramid weight hook right down here. And this is another rig that I actually show you in the advance portion of the video. I also use this for striped bass.
Once again, I tie a Palomar knots on all my junctions here. I am using a 2 ounce pyramid weight because this is tidal water, the water will move quite a bit and you need a pyramid weight to actually get cut down in the mud because it's real soft bottom over here.
When I say that, you want to use a medium to heavy rod or light to medium and such a pounds test you know for a baitcasting rod or spinning rod, you can actually see what you are rods supports right here on the base of the rod. You do a little close up, you can see right here, how much line your rod can take and what it is? If it's a medium to heavy or medium to light action rod and it will tell you the length of your rod right there, six and half or seven foot.
And when you fishing for catfish, you can find them in pretty much any lake or river system out there. Catfish are abundance in all sorts of different species. There is no particular place to really search for catfish better than others. You can find them in spots where there's notched structure on the bottom or just muddy areas. You can find them just about anywhere. They say the key time to catching catfish is around sundown and at night time. Aside from that there is not too much else for tracking catfish.
Jose: One part that I would like to add here is you see me getting a bait much closely. If you really want to feel the bite you need to have a little bit attention on your line, you don't want a lot of loose line there, you really need to be able to feel the fish quite to get a good hooks there. Okay, now watch closely here after I release this fish. Jose is going to get it real strong bite and once how fast he sets the hook, just like that. Can you see that, he had a good amount of tension on that line to feel that fish as soon as it pump the rod down here, as soon as that rod tip went down, he give a good solid hooks there on this catfish like this. Nice channel catfish. Alright, nice hooks set there.
Nick: Alright, Jose got us a good channel cat here, it's right about 16-17 inches. Now the way to hold them is their up horns right here, right here and the top fin. So you slide your hand back to push the top horn down level with his body and the base your thumb and the base your index finger, slide up to hold the other horn stable. You don't want to get yourself hooked by one of these little horns here, really burn you.
The catfish have really hard mouth, take a little closer where you can see where its hook right here. And you could see how hard Jose have to the set the hook, there is a good reason for that. You don't set the hook hard on these guys, they spit the bait right back off. Alright, now with the catch-and-release the catfish, the pretty tough, you don't have to be too fragile; they will swim off, no matter what. Give a nice little toss back in and its ready to go. And that's Beginner Catfishing with Nick the Informative Fisherman.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services