Teaching a old skill to someone very special.

[RIVER HAWK]

I have not put in a trotline in several years. I decided to put in three lines and show Sweet Thang how to build and run a trotline. She said it always made her think about the Hank Williams Jr. song, "A Country Boy Can Survive". I started using Magic Bait Trotline clips years ago. They allow you to simply run a heavy line with no hooks and then make up your hook sets using the Trotline Clips. The neat thing about these clips is they are removable from the main line with just a simple squeeze. You can take a monster cat off and place in your bucket without struggling to unhook a monster with the rest of the line full of fish. I was using a cast net to catch shad around my dock light. We caught 7 catfish on unbaited hooks before we even baited up for the first time. We were catching cats on the first line while we were baiting up the other two. We ended up with 35 the first night. Now these were nice cats. I got 2 gallons of fillet from these fish. When I cleaned them I noticed something I never knew. Their stomachs were full of mussels that were as big as a silver dollar. This got me thinking. The bottom of my beach is loaded with mussels as big as baseballs. I felt around with my toes and pulled one out of the mud. I cut is open and was able to bait 7 hooks with the meat inside. I can't wait to see if they prefer this mussel meat over shad. This is kind of exciting because I always wanted to use those huge mussels for something unique. It felt good teaching someone I love how to be a little more self-reliant. I will let you know how the mussel meat did.

[JimmyS]

River Hawk, this was good reading. I also caught a catfish once that had a large snail in it"s stomach. I think a catfish will eat most anything. that trot line sounds easy to use, thanks for sharing. Jimmy S.

[Shine Runner]

That is interesting. Were they crushed up or whole? Hope you found a new bait. Free bait is always good!

[RIVER HAWK]

They were whole. The shells were opened and empty and several had not been opened. I baited up a few hooks yesterday in the afternoon instead of at night. The hooks were empty this morning, but I am going to try this again around 12am and see what happens.