The First Cats Of Spring Are The Finest Cats Of All!

Cat obsession is for winter kill, Mother Nature’s road kill—dead-something fish—shad in reservoirs; bullheads, bluegills and so on in lakes and ponds; carp, suckers, shad, carpsuckers, quillback, and such stuff in rivers.

Fish gotta go sometime and the going is better during winter for fish aged, starving, and in other ways not up to Mother’s standards. Ice-cold water delays decomposition. Warming water hastens decomposition, which brings gas, which makes the winter killed bloat like a blimp.

Floaters. Prevailing wind or current moves these pale, limp, dead-fish ships until in lakes they stack in necked-down areas or in bays; in ponds they stack in corners; and in rivers they find their way to backwashes (eddies) or they tumble in current along the bottom.

Decomposition continues, the warmer the faster. After a few days in the warm sun, bloated gas bladders burst. By this time, some firm floaters have become flaccid, torn sinkers. Certain bays, backwaters, necked-down areas, and eddies are full of them. In fast-moving rivers, the carcasses continue to tumble in the current along drop-off edges. In rivers, sinkers are washed from eddy to eddy.

In waters up north, pike—spawners at ice-out—are the first to feed on this winter destruction. Pike love deadbait. By the time water temperatures reach 45°F, however, even North Country cats are ready to feed.

Cats in cold water? Well, yes. I can’t tell you exactly where North Country cats become South Country cats, only that just as there are Florida-strain bass and northern-strain bass, there are NC cats and SC cats. SC cats don’t have to contend with frigid water, so they often feed all season long.

Most of the world seems to think cats stop feeding in September and don’t start again until April or May. Even in Minnesota and Manitoba, cats feed into November and are occasionally caught through the ice. And in spring, it doesn’t take long to get them going.

OK, so maybe 45°F isn’t the exact temperature. You know what I mean. You kind of feel it in spring after 20 years of fishing; you kind of feel it’s time a week or so or two after ice-out, and two or three days into warm, stable weather; and it’s overcast and you know a thunderstorm’s coming on and the crawlers might be out for the first time; and the cats, as Gus does, will turn into pathetic slobbering fools in the presence of the right food.

There’s no helping themselves. The cats will be there where they must be, the longer they’ve lived, the longer they’ve been programmed, the bigger they probably are, and the more likely they are to be there, in these spots filled with road kill.

About the road kill. I have always kept cats and dogs, and lately, kids, and know of burp-up on rugs and car seats and dog-do on vibram-soled shoes. I have spent 20 years experimenting with stinkbaits. I have spent a week in elk camp with Toad without a bath. I have spent hundreds of days toting blood and tolerating flies while catfishing in l00-degree heat. I have gutted a hundred deer and thousands of fish and arrow-killed bears. I have worked on the kill floor of meat packing plants. I do not have a weak stomach.