Drifting up a Channel Cat KOTC Upgrade!!

[SteveD]

I’ve been fishing upstream of Stillwater chasing flatheads for most of the month of June with little to show for all the effort. With the flatheads into the spawn I decided to move down into Lake St Croix and drift for channel cats. My goal was to get a channel cat upgrade and surge ahead on the channel cat leader board but I wasn’t expecting that to happen tonight. I was only going to go out for a couple of hours and shake out the boat and make sure everything was working for drifting. I’m having trolling motor issues and sonar issues and the weather was marginal with a lot of lightning and hot and muggy. I started fishing at 7:30pm and at 9:15 I was ready to hang it up because I was having equipment malfunctions. I was just about to give it up when this beautiful channel cat made my day. By the time I got done getting his picture I didn’t like the looks of the weather so I headed in – not a bad night for a couple of hours work and in bed before midnight.

I caught the channel on cut bullhead in 10 feet of water on a long point with a steep break line into 30 feet of water. He was right on a GPS waypoint from a nice fish I caught last year in this same spot. Never throw your waypoints away, if there were fish there once they can be there again. Besides when your sonar goes out you can always just run your waypoint drift lines and still find fish.

[Shack]

Great update Steve!

Got to love equipment malfunctions.

Keep us posted on your drifting channels bite. Sounds like a blast.

[DTro]

Nice fish Steve!

Guess I have to start fishing for channels again

[AceintheHole]

Very nice channel!!

[Lowblazah]

One huge detail left out here...How big was it?

[SteveD]

One huge detail left out here...How big was it?

Oops, Sorry. It was 33" X 18" for a 51. The St Croix has put out some big channels so far this year. This is the best channel cat year I have had as far as size.