Not crappie, Catfish questions...
So this year on my visits down to Santee, I've sort of concentrated on targeting catfish, specifically in and close to the canal in both lakes. Had some success with a few fish in the teens back in the spring. Last trip in late June, we caught plenty of eaters up to about 10 pounds and released most. Some guys were filling the coolers.
This past weekend (9/29-10/1) we went with high hopes and planned on catch and release only. Geez-Louise what a slow weekend. We fished the ledges on the river channels, edges of humps, up near the Marion Dam, down in Moultrie open water targeting humps along the river/creek channels as well as the drop off ledges, in the Canal, in the shallow "cuts" along the Canal.
We anchored, we fought the wind and drifted with the wind, we spot locked over likely areas, we pulled at .30-.60 mph along the above mentioned areas, with and without planer boards. We tried frozen Bream, fresh Bream cutbait, live Bream, Blueback Herring, even chicken breasts, plain and jello.
We fished at daylight to lunchtime, and fished in the evenings after dark. Sunday I came in at lunch time, went back out mid-afternoon & stayed after dark.
We got one 6 1/4 lb Flathead and one small Channel about 3 lbs. And we marked very few fish, especially compared to back in June.
We went with high hopes and it being this time of year, expected the bite to be hot. The other thing we noticed was there were not what I would consider "a lot" of boats fishing. It also was a full moon.
What did we miss? Where did we go wrong? Someone send out a memo to the catfish to move out? Are they way up in the swamp? I'm at a loss but trying to learn. Any words of wisdom?