John Jamison of Spring Hill, Kansas, has racked up many catfishing honors, including as 2007 National Points Champion on the Cabela’s King Kat Tournament Trail, also placing second in the 2006 Cabela’s King Kat Classic. In winter, he primarily fishes the Missouri River from the Nebraska line to Columbia, Missouri. “I cover such a large area because every year is different from the previous, depending on winter migration, which is directly influenced by the amount of water we receive each year,” he says. “In low-water years, I don’t see a lot of fish far upriver.”

Jamison fishes for winter cats in water down into the 30°F range but says winter patterns begin earlier, when temperatures fall to about 52°F and lower. “That’s when blues make a big shift, from swifter outside bends to deeper water with less current. The best spots are scour holes around wing dams. The Missouri has a lot of ****s and scour holes but few concentrate blue cats, so you have to search to find fish.

“Current in scour holes runs at about 2 mph compared to 3 to 5 mph in outside bend areas. Depth is important but not the only factor. I normally prefer scour holes that are 30 to 45 feet deep and seldom fish any that are shallower. A scour hole that’s immediately above a good summertime outside bend or channel swing holds more fish than one in a straight stretch of river.”

In winter on the Missouri, Jamison primarily fishes from an anchored position, because he hasn’t been able to slow a drift enough to be effective in cold water. “I start by placing two rods at the front of a scour hole and two a little farther into it,” he says. “I continue to move baits towards the back of the hole until I locate fish. When they’re aggressive they tend to be toward the front side of the hole, but I also catch a lot of fish in the back or tailout. Fish in the core of the hole tend to be the least active.”

Downsized presentations are key to Jamison’s approach. “I believe that smaller is better in winter,” he says. “I use a 7/0 to 10/0 Daiichi Circle Wide hook (DZ85) in warm water, but down through the mid-30°F range, I switch to a 5/0 size to better match the smaller baits I use then. My primary winter bait is shad. I cut the head off and use only that. The whole bait is about the size of a quarter to a 50-cent piece, compared to the rest of the year when I’m baiting with 6- to 8-inch sections of cut skipjack herring, shad, or carp.”

Blues become particularly sluggish during midwinter cold fronts, he notes. “When there’s a combination of a south wind and mild temperatures, blues tend to hit more aggressively. When the wind blows from the north and air temperatures are down in the 30s or lower, the fish bite more gingerly, even big fish, and the smaller hook-and-bait combo has the advantage.”

He doesn’t fish with the same piece of bait for longer than 20 minutes, noting that changing baits often is key to developing a stronger scent trail. “I think that a small bait emits more scent in cold water than it does in warm water; or maybe the scent dispersion lasts longer when it’s cold. Blues still eat big baits, but the smaller baits seem to have the advantage in winter.”

Freshly caught bait is often preferred among blue cat anglers. But Jamison offers a theory to the possible benefits of using previously frozen bait. “A common thought in winter is that most of the forage base is winterkill, not fresh

livebait,” he says. Gizzard shad and other baitfish often experience pulses of mortality in winter, when dead carcasses provide a source of food for catfish.“

I find that bait stored frozen and then thawed is a better option than fresh. Thawed baits develop a stronger and more distinctive odor, more closely mimicking a winterkilled baitfish. It might be just enough of a difference to attract more cats, at times.

“I learned another trick from a fisherman who’s fished the Missouri for years,” Jamison says. It’s called a stink bucket. Put a bunch of carp fillets in a bucket and throw in a couple of whole shad for flavoring. Refrigerate the bucket for a month or so, and use chunks of cut carp for bait. It works so well I hesitate to mention it.” The formula he’s referring to is a milder version of a true sourbait, which can be a top option for channel cats feeding on winterkilled shad in early spring.

To present baits, he uses a sliprig. He threads a 4- to 6-ounce egg sinker on 80-pound-test McCoy braided line that’s tied to a barrel swivel, followed by an 18-inch leader of 60-pound Berkley Big Game monofilament and then the hook. He hooks the shad through the eyes or, if the current’s fast, under the mouth and through the snout to keep the mouth from catching too much water.

If he’s fishing around a lot of rock, Jamison ditches the egg sinker and opts for a dropper—a bank sinker tied to a 4- to 6-inch section of 20-pound mono. The dropper’s hung on the mainline using the snap end of a snap swivel. If the sinker gets snagged, the dropper breaks, saving the rest of the rig. He uses braid exclusively for a mainline, noting that since he’s made the switch, his hooking percentage has risen to above 90 percent.

Through trial and error, he arrived at a leader length of around 18 inches for his coldwater setup. “In the slower currents in the scour holes, you can get away with a longer leader. It allows the bait to waft around in the current without flapping too wildly. When leaders get too long, though, you lose control over the bait. I sometimes walk baits downriver through spots, lifting the rig off bottom and letting it move downstream in increments, and that gets difficult when a leader’s too long.”

To match the lighter-style fishing in winter, he downsizes rod weight, using the Blue Cat Number 2, the lightest of his three signature series E-Glass models available from The Rod Shop (816/454-6740) in Kansas City, Missouri. The Number 2 is an 8-footer and has the softest tip in the series. This helps to detect lighter bites that often occur when midwinter fronts move through.

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.

SPAWN PERIOD

By the time the water temperature exceeds 50°F, blues start their gradual and inexorable progression to spawning sites. The spawn on the Missouri River encompasses nearly 7 weeks and, during this period, continuous waves of new participants invade the spawning grounds, he says. Some observers suspect that a few of the males that remain near spawning sites mate with more than one female.

Both males and females prepare the spawning bed, but after the female deposits her eggs and the male fertilizes them, it’s the male’s bailiwick to keep the nest clean, oxygenate the eggs, and protect the nest from creatures that seek to consume the eggs and fry. Traditionally, the last male leaves his spawning nest around July 15.

During the spawn, many of the fish become emaciated and are blemished with sores and scars. From Jamison’s perspective, this 7-week spell is the most difficult period of the year to consistently catch big blues. Nevertheless, he occasionally drives the barb of a Gamakatsu Octopus hook into the jowls of a blue cat of substantial proportions.

He attaches an 8-ounce egg sinker above an 18-inch leader of 80-pound Dacron, affixing the leader to a 10/0 Gamakatsu Octopus hook with a snell knot. His choice of baits ranges from freshly cut shad, carp, or goldeye to live green sunfish and chubs.

When the river flows from normal to no more than 2 feet higher, he fishes outside riprap riverbends during daylight hours. Rather than probe the steep or nearly vertical sections of these bends, he focuses on gradually sloping areas, concentrating primarily on notches and depressions along these banks. Blues in these areas are searching for, preparing, or guarding a nesting site.

Jamison and a partner employ a total of four rod-and-reel combos, placing one over the drop-off and allowing the bait to settle into about 25 feet of water, while three other outfits work the gradually sloping topography of the riprap, plying water as shallow as 4 feet. At these riprap bends, he doesn’t fish a fruitless section for more than 30 minutes, he says.

These areas can be fished at night, but they usually are replete with snags, and getting snagged, breaking lines, and tying rigs compounds the inherent chores of night-fishing. Moreover, the necessity to move every 30 minutes is difficult to accomplish at night.

Therefore, at night, during the early stages of the spawning season and toward the end of it, Jamison prefers to fish the flats in 4 to 8 feet of water between wing dams, the same environs he works for blues during summer. During the early days of the spawn, he says, “some fish are still actively feeding and covering a lot of ground looking for spawning sites.

Also, near the end of the spawn, some fish have spawned and are once again actively feeding.”

At night, the flats are easier to fish than the riprap bends because of fewer snags. And if an angler is anchored at a bountiful flat, he can stay there all night and allow the blues to come to him.

When working a flat, Jamison changes the length of his leader to 24 inches. The speed of the current, he notes, is what dictates the length of the leader. According to his formula, an 18-inch leader is for fast water, a 24-incher for slower

currents. He also substitutes a 3- or 4-ounce No-Roll sinker for the egg sinker on the flats.

But he regularly utters an important disclaimer about working flats during the heat of the spawn: “The flats are typically dead—no-fish zones—from June 15 to July 1, when most of the fish are spawning. Believe me, I’ve spent years and many, many fruitless nights figuring this out.”

During those spawning seasons when the river flows high and hard, Jamison moves to L ****s, also called trail ****s. Many of the blues have moved there, he says, taking refuge from current and debris that accompany the high water by moving inside the L-shaped wing dams. If the water stays high throughout June, the blues also spawn in the crevices and depressions of the riprap that line the inside of these ****s.

He fishes an L **** by anchoring his boat on top of it and then placing his baits at various spots along the inside edge, using a 24-inch leader and a 4-ounce flat sinker. In his experience, L ****s are productive both night and day at high-water times during the spawn.

Even though Jamison pigeonholed the spawning season as his most trying and least fruitful period of the year, he still manages during every spawn to enjoy a Donnybrook with some 30-pounders—during the spawn of 2002, he caught and released a 65-pounder.