I'm thinking about this spot that I fished at the past two times and how the catfish were hitting my bait. Now usually I've got some pretty hefty hooks and catfish hits would nearly rip the rod out of your hands. These spot has always been a challenging spot for hook ups. The catfish do bite but often just a quick tug or little nibbles. Often times it feels like current pushing your rig downstream. Every time I have the rod in the rod holder, it would've been too late to put the hook set on. I would feel weightlessness instead of feeling the weight of a fish, let alone the weight of my sinker. Now twice on the first night I gave a good hook set on nothing. Normally you would feel the weight of the sinker drag or settles back down to the bottom, but I still felt nothing for too long of a time. I crank up all the slack to feeling of a current pull, then weight if a fish, and then a sweeping hook set to a fish fight.
This got me to thinking I need to change up tactics. That's where the second night, I primarily fished with the graphite rod instead of the fiberglass rod. Furthermore it was also primarily with rod in hand instead of in the rod holders. All the hooked catfish on this second night came from subtle bites. I started out with a typical medium wire hook, but the catfish were spitting it out before I could put the hook set on them. So I went with a light wire hook, thinking that I might loses to the hook wire bending. Yes my hook up changed afterwards. I was able to better detect bait pick up and had more time with the light wire hook. I was able to put the hook set and drive it home. That led to the bag limit on second night.
In addition to the spot being a community spot, I think the catfish are quite use to fishing pressure.
