Page 12 - Mid America Boating - March 2024 issue

Angler’s Angles
MARCH 2024 [ MID-AMERICA BOATING
“Rough fish”
can make a fun start
for spring fishing
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By Richard Martin
] 12
March can be a slow month for boating fishermen. Most haven’t launched their boats yet, but
some would still like to do a little fishing and enjoy those occasional nice days that March
can provide. They might try for late season steelhead, but that can be a lot of work, so a better
option if you’d like to just go fishing, relax in weak sunshine, and watch redwing blackbirds
singing on a cattail, is to choose to try your luck on rough fish, and one good choice is bull-
head catfish.
These hardy little fish invade Lake Erie marshes so early that I’ve caught them when ice crys-
tals still tinkled along the shoreline, and I’ve made good catches from marshes above Fremont
to more on Catawba Island, and other marshes further east yet. You won’t catch strictly bull-
heads in that shallow water. I do my early fishing with two rods rigged with a half ounce sinker
on lines end and two short side lines above with No. 6 or 4 longshank hooks, though ordinary
hooks work, too. Everything likes a worm, so in one trip to Fremont country my worms enticed
some carp, one or two sheepshead, and sundry other critters, but bullheads dominated the
catch, and that’s what I kept. I had plans aplenty for that lot.
Bullhead catfish bite year around, and I’ve even taken them through the ice. They’re plentiful,
easy to catch, and the little whiskered devils are found from the Ohio River to Lake Erie and
nearly every lake and stream between. Many’s the man, boy, and girl who’s cut their teeth on
both the fishing and fillets of these hungry catfish, and they ARE catfish. I’ve heard more than
one angler say “I got half a dozen catfish today, and some bullheads, too.”, but they’re in the
same family with channel and shovelhead cats, and have essentially the same characteristics.
Knowing those characteristics can boost your catch.
river oxbows, lakes across the state, and those aforementioned swamps from Fremont east.
Bullheads are basically bottom feeders, and they love quiet backwaters like those found in
They’re easily recognized by a square or slightly rounded tail, rather than forked as in channel
cats and shovelheads, and they’re well blessed with scent organs by the hundred in paired
whiskers or barbels. In fact, that’s how they find their dinner, by swimming slowly over mud or
aquatic vegetation and letting those barbels skim the bottom. Anything edible is immediately
sensed and swallowed in essentially the same motion.
I’ve kept bullheads in aquariums more than once, feeding them bits of liver or fish flesh, and
been amazed that their weak little eyes couldn’t see a piece of juicy meat drifting down just
inches away. But let that food touch a whisker, and the morsel simply disappears. This charac-
teristic is clue number one to catching bullheads - that bait has to have odor, and the more the
better. I frequently fish these little cats with worms, and worms pierced by a hook have plenty
of scent, for a while. But if nothing hits within 15-20 minutes, I’ll reel in and change the worm to
send fresh scent to questing fish..
a SAMS
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