Cats in Far SE Wisconsin

I don't target cats as I'm usually trying for Crappie or Gills. Anyways, I catch cats just about every time I go out on the Fox above the dam in Waterford. They hit fatheads or crawler chunks pretty regularly. I'd have to imagine if your trying for them you could really clean house.

If you have a boat you can put in at the silver lake launch and go down just before the wilmot bridge the is a big brush pile behind the fire department and there is a deep hole there. got a 16.9 lb channel there last year on cut gizzard shad. You can use stink bait and catch allot but mostly smaller ones. I now fish at mchenry dam for most of my cats but catch them above the waterford dam and below it right in the spillway. You can probably do really go at the rochester dam if you wade out to the peninsula by the spillway and fish.

Thanks for the tip. I had a feeling I wasn't using enuf weight. Once all this crummy weather passes I'll have to give it another try.

You can use that current to your advantage. When I river fish for cats, I use smelly bait, the smellier the better. Then use large a sinker that has an eye on it so your line runs through the eye, this way the fish doesn't feel all that weight. You can run your hook right up to the sinker, or use a large swivel and put about a foot of line between it and the hook so the sinker butts up against the swivel, then your line and hook hangs off the other end of the swivel. Then plop that stinky bait right into the current and let the current carry that stink to the fish. If the fish are active, as they should be now, they will follow the smell and come eat lunch. This is the way that I've always river fished for cats, both up here in WI and down in NC, and I have done really well using this method.

The trick is to have enough weight to hold the bait in place. In a swift current, it could take a few ounces of lead to do the job. On the fox in Big Bend, I normally used 2 to 2.5 ounces to hold the bait in place.

Good baits to use with this method: Fresh cut gills or carp (look up how to make a gut pocket with bluegills), chicken liver (use nylons to hold the liver to the hook), raw shrimp (works better if its left out for a day or 2 in the sun, just use latex or similar gloves while handling the rotting shrimp, that smell is hard to get out of your hands).

Ok so last weekend I wet a line at the Fox River Park near the boat launch. I was skunked but I may say it looks like a mighty fine stretch. I encountered some issues though. Something I was not ready for was the current. I would throw my line and then it would drift and drift till it was outside the current, this was about 10ft from the bank. I did alil research and learned I gotta find the calm areas where the current breaks. If I remember I thought I saw a calmer area just a short walk down from the launch. So for my first time out it was educational to say the least.

yes I think I've got a few places picked out on the Fox. Just gotta go wet a line. Thanks for the reply I'll check out the Rock as well.

Rock or fox river. Lots of cats in the rock.