Spring

In March and early April, blues forage frequently and ravenously, says Jamison. And as the water begins to slowly warm during the transition from winter to spring, the fish become so gluttonous that even a harsh cold front won’t completely stymie their wolfish nature. In fact, he caught and released a 77-pounder as a brutal cold front and north wind sashayed across central Missouri in the early spring of 2003. But day in and day out, he says, the best fishing occurs after several consecutive days of balmy weather, with warm breezes from the south.

Missouri River catmen continue to ply wing dams in March and early April. But Jamison says that most anglers probe only the current seam that courses off the tip of the dam and the scour hole below. They usually don’t fish the scour hole above the dam, which is where he tangled with the 77-pounder and half of the other blues he caught during the early spring of 2003.

Before he fishes a wing dam, he examines it with sonar, beginning his exploration by motoring upstream in the seam of the current below the wing dam and slowly moving above it, searching for a scour hole along the face of the dam. Not all wing dams have a scour hole above them, but the best ones do, he notes.

While searching for the contours of a scour hole, he also monitors his sonar, and, when it reveals a gaggle of big fish milling about near the bottom, they’re usually blue catfish. A large congregation of suspended big fish, meanwhile, normally indicates carp, although sometimes, he says, those suspended fish are blues rather then carp, and the only way to positively identify them is to catch one.

Jamison’s favorite bait is either a fresh gizzard shad or goldeye. But since a substantial amount of winterkill moves downriver in March, blues will also inhale a freshly frozen shad or goldeye impaled on a 10/0 hook.

If the river rises more than 6 inches above its normal flow, the location of the blue cats that gather along the current seam at the tip of a wing dam will change. Jamison says they move into the scour hole immediately below the dam, a move that gets them away from the debris flowing downstream and shelters them from the current.

In the locales he fishes on the Missouri River, the channel depth during normal water levels ranges from 12 to 15 feet, while the depth along the outside bends of the river ranges from 20 to 25 feet. He avoids fishing portions of the river that are devoid of bends, he says, as one of the verities of Missouri River blue-cat fishing is that those parts of the river with a multitude of bends are also graced with a multitude of blues cats.

The water temperature for his late-winter and early-spring pattern ranges from 34°F to nearly 50°F, but as it rises and eventually broaches 45°F, the massive congregations of blues begin to disperse, and individuals scatter far and wide throughout the river system. Consequently, the number of blues Jamison catches diminishes: Instead of tangling with 200 pounds of cats at one scour hole, he catches only one here and one there.