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Fishing Kansas farm ponds - Bass, catfish, crappie and perch.
tooling up the week before...
We're going fishing this weekend on a small farm pond in southeastern Shawnee County, Kansas. "We" is myself, my brother David and his thirteen year old son Griffin, hereinafter referred to as "Griff." We've already been to this pond once, David and I have, and caught roughly eighteen largemouth bass and a couple of small perch in less than two hours. It was pretty fast fishing. I tried at least five top water lures, mostly spinners and spoons, and caught fish on each one, usually on the first cast. Catfish are known to be in this pond but we hadn't brought any suitable bait for them so we didn't catch any.
Most of the catfish I've caught have been on worms and ordinary store bought chicken livers. I used a cheese/blood dough bait on the trot-line I ran in Little Elm, Texas on Lewisville Lake 24 years ago that I had pretty good luck with but for the most part I've caught them on plain old night crawlers. I'd almost bought two dozen at a large National retailer when we went two weeks ago but they looked about half dead so I decided to wait until we could find an actual bait shop, then of course we never got around to stopping anywhere... This time we'll be prepared.
The first catfish bait I'm taking is made by Magic Bait (www.magicbait.com). It comes in a ten ounce plastic bag of prepared doughballs made from chicken livers and chicken blood and cost $2.78 at a large National retailer here in Topeka. I was just at the Magic Bait website a few minutes ago to see if I got a good deal on the price but apparently prices are available only by email request. Depending on how well this stuff sticks on a hook, a ten ounce bag should last quite a while.
The second catfish bait I've got is made by the Strike King Lure Company (www.strikeking.com). It's packaged in a twelve ounce plastic container with a protective shrinkwrap seal over the lid and sold for $2.98. It's called "Catfish Dynamite" and that is literally all I know about it at this point. It claims to be catfish bait and was on the shelf right next to the Magic Bait at that same large National retailer that I shop at but refuse to plug so I grabbed it. I'm into product evaluations these days... trying out new stuff.
6/10/2007
6:15 a.m. Light rain falling as I type this. It's falling intermittently, raining for fifteen minutes and stopping for fifteen, then starting up again. The forecast is calling for a 50% chance of thunderstorms and apparently it's for the entire day. An hour ago there was only a 40% chance. Rain is not necessarily a fatal error with respect to fishing, not for us it isn't, especially rain as wimpy as this. Lightning or hail could be a game stopper, or at least a game delayer. High winds or excessive heat could call a trip off, too. Not light rain though.
6/11/2007
I caught one tiny bass yesterday. This was at Shawnee Lake in Topeka, Kansas. That's it on the right. Griff had one bite but got overanxious and lost it. David got skunked. We tried three different places. Shawnee was first and after several hours there we drove out to Clinton State Park in Douglas County and tried two more places. Clinton Lake wasn't happening either but we've got plans to go back there next Saturday and spend the night fishing for catfish.
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