Location, Baits, And Riggings for Rivers

If he’s fishing around a lot of rock, he 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, saying that since he’s made the switch, his hooking percentage has been above 90 percent.

Through trial and error, Jamison 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, you lose control over the bait. Plus, I sometimes walk baits downriver through spots, lifting the rig off bottom and letting it move downstream in increments. 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.

Moyer on the Cumberland

Legendary guide Jim Moyer’s blue-cat proving grounds include the Mississippi, the middle to lower Ohio, lower Missouri, and Cumberland rivers. The Cumberland, flowing through his home state, is where he stays in close contact with blues in winter.

Unlike the free-flowing Missouri where Jamison fishes, the Cumberland is more affected by dams, which form a series of navigation pools along the river and dictate flows. Compared to the Missouri, the Cumberland is relatively uniform in terms of structural and depth diversity, characterized by steeper ledges along the margins dropping into the main channel and few wing dams. he says in stretches of the Cumberland, he fishes the Barkley and Cheatham pools, where frequent rains during winter keep flows running at a good clip.

The heart of winter is the best time of year to catch big blue cats. “Once the water cools, through fall and right through winter I target blues along steep ledges—spots that drop off quickly into deep water,” Moyer says. “Steeper ledges are better than areas with gradual depth change. Often, the best spots drop quickly into 30 to 40 feet. There’s pretty good current running along those ledges.”

He anchors his boat parallel to a ledge and makes long casts to set baits between 30 and 40 feet deep along the lower part of the ledge, where it flattens into the channel. “That’s how I start out the day, but if I find that a particular depth is more productive, I reposition the other baits to that depth. Sometimes the blue cats are tight to the base of the ledge, and that rod’s getting all the action. So I make a short cast with one rod at that depth, then sequentially longer casts with the other rods to set baits in a line along the contour. It’s amazing how closely tied to structure blues can be.”