Dollahon begins each outing by slowly and deliberately maneuvering his boat, crisscrossing large expanses of deep water. His eyes are affixed to his sonar while he searches for the ideal combination of suspended shad and blue catfish. Sometimes he spends 30 minutes or more looking for the ideal scenario. Like the proverbial search for the needle in a haystack, it tests an angler’s observation skills and abilities to relish the thrill of monotony.
At times he settles for a less-than-ideal aggregation of shad and blue cats, meaning that the shad are too deep and blues too scattered. But even at some of the inferior scenarios and locales, he and his co-anglers occasionally tangle with a catfish or two.
Examining the behaviors of several schools of shad and blue catfish with an Aqua-Vu camera reveals that these species can move constantly and haphazardly, and even a gigantic concentration of shad and blue catfish rarely remains at the same place for more than 10 minutes. Throughout the day as the aggregations of shad and blue catfish continually move, Dollahon makes extensive searches with his sonar to relocate a school, or to find another school of shad and blue catfish. He uses either his outboard or his bow-mounted MotorGuide variable-speed trolling motor with built-in transducer to search.
On our January 21st trip the water temperature registered 43°F and Dollahon examined three different locales: halfway inside a large secondary creek arm; the mouth of a main-lake cove; and, a massive and complex underwater environment that was adjacent to the main river channel near the dam. The only fruitful area was the one in the vicinity of the dam.
Once he located a pack of blue catfish in 40 feet of water with a bevy of threadfin shad below, he positioned his boat directly above them and used his trolling motor to slowly maneuver around the edges of the fish, as well as cutting figure-8s across the entire mass of fish.
At times, Dollahon finds it best to keep the boat motionless and floating directly above the core of the schools of shad and blue catfish—an easier task to accomplish on a windless day. Windless conditions also facilitate a more precise presentation of a jig, as well as make it easier to detect subtle and tentative strikes.
When his boat was correctly positioned, he dropped the jig vertically into 40 feet of water. Then he executed a variety of presentations to identify the one that elicited the most strikes. He also experimented with various depths, ranging from 35 to 55 feet. At times, his jig plummeted into 65 and 70 feet of water, where he failed to get a strike from a blue catfish. Most of the strikes were at depths of 35 to 45 feet over lake depths of 130 feet.
Presentation Palette
As Dollahon holds his rod parallel to the lake’s surface, he slowly moves it about 4 feet to the left, stopping it and allowing the jig to swing. Once the jig is directly under the rod tip, he moves it 4 feet to the right and allows it to swing again.
Occasionally he lifts the jig several feet by slowly raising and then dropping the rod, allowing the jig to fall on a semi-slack line. Sometimes he enhances the rise and fall by shaking his rod. He also experiments with different intensities of shakes. At times, he shakes it only during the fall. During some of the lifts and drops, he creates a laddering sequence, pausing the lift and drop about every 8 inches.
As he slowly moves his boat with the trolling motor around and across the suspended fish, he works into the wind, employing a stop-and-go strolling motif with an eye on keeping his jig as vertical as possible. When he stops the trolling motor, the jig begins to slowly swing toward his rod tip, and when he starts the trolling motor, the jig strolls away from the rod tip.
During these strolling spells, he sometimes shakes his rod, but most of the time he holds it motionless and parallel to the surface. These short strolls and swings of the jig occasionally provoked a blue catfish to attack the presentation. But, he says that the catfish often prefer a deadstick presentation of his jig and Long John Minnow.
There are outings when all of his presentations catch cats, and there are days when only one or two of them bewitches his quarry. He says that the cornerstone to a successful trip revolves around testing all of the presentations in his repertoire, as well as occasionally adding a few quirky flashes, gyrations, and undulations in hopes of attracting the eye of a nearby blue cat.
Most of the blues that Dollahon and his co-anglers catch weigh from 4 to 6 pounds, occasionally battling some that weigh 10 to 15 pounds, the largest upwards of 25. On the best days, they elicit seven strikes an hour. But on those rare outings when it’s bitterly cold and a pesky wind angles out of the wrong direction or the bulk of the shad are inactive and clustered on the bottom and the blue catfish are tentative, it’s a struggle to garner three strikes an hour.
Dollahon describes his light-tackle tactics to be an electrifying way to catch blue catfish, but he is quick to note that his understanding of the ways of suspended blue catfish is still in its infancy. For instance, he is yet to test adding a daub of punchbait or a thin sliver of fresh shad to his spoon or jig combo, and he suspects that there are other presentations that might score in the dead of winter. Likewise he’s eager to test his methods at waterways such as Lake Eufaula and Grand Lake in Oklahoma, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, and Kentucky Lake.
Ned Kehde, Lawrence, Kansas, is one of three In-Fisherman field editors and a longtime contributor on a variety of topics.
