Cat Food

[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]When I was learning to fish for trout, as a kid in Idaho, my dad and uncles taught me to let the fish tell me what they were eating. The ritual on many fishing trips was to open up the first few fish and examine the stomach contents (in the days before the fancy suction pumps for checking stomach contents without harming the fish). If two or more fish had been feeding on the same things, then we did what we could to "match the hatch". Of course, in those days, that usually meant using "garden hackle"...worms and grubs...and occasionally minnows.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Over the years I have maintained a gross curiosity about checking the digestive systems of the fish I take home to the fillet board. After slicing off the first fillet (and exposing the internal organs), I usually do at least a quick look at the stomach. If there is a visible lump in the gut, I feel it and/or slice it free of the rest of the innards and check out what the contents might be. Obviously, this has led to some most unpleasant sights and smells, but it has also contributed to my education on what fish really eat, and how different items come into the food chain throughout the year.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]I am sure we could have a long thread here, if we simply asked "What is the most unusual thing you have ever found in a fish's (any species) stomach?" I can say that I have been surprised by many of the things I have found, in almost every species. For the most part, fish are opportunists and will chomp on almost anything. I know, I know, there are a lot of fishless fishing trips where the results don't match up with that statement.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]I started this post to simply make some observations on some of the things I have observed about Utah catfish in particular...channel cats specifically. First, most of the channel cats I have "CSI'ed" have had mostly the remains of some kind of fish or aquatic invertebrate in them...like crawdads, large larvae, leeches, etc. The larger the cat, the more likely the "leftovers" will be the remains of whole fish, of several inches or more. Channel cats are efficient foragers and often catch and eat live food. Of course, they don't turn down the dead stuff either.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Part of what prompted this post was filleting the 8 cats my wife and I secured for a family fish fry, this past Friday at Lindon Boat Harbor. They had all been dining well, but almost all had something different in their stomachs. I found chunks of cut bait (probably discarded by anglers), whole shiner minnows (also probably former bait bits), remnants of crawdads, some large helgramite larvae (up to 3"), a mostly dissolved white bass (6" -7"), etc. [/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Probably one of the more interesting items, found in several of the cats, were CARP SCALES. I have seen the same thing many times in the past. Cats pick them up and ingest them, both when the carp lose them during aggressive spawning rituals, and when they find a dead carp on the bottom. They do not have sharp enough teeth to bite into the carcass, but they can strip off and eat some scales. The scales can be digested by the powerful juices in the catfish's system, and are almost pure protein.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]One of the cats I took from the "bubbleup" area recently, had a freshly ingested thigh bone of a piece of chicken. My guess is that one of the anglers in the daily bubbleup armada had tossed a KFC bone over the side, after snacking on the flesh. Hey, kitties do like chicken parts (parts is parts). I once witnessed the post mortem on a 15 pound channel from the lower Provo River that had a whole small chicken in it's stomach. Now, THAT was disgusting. The smell was almost enough to make me swear off both chicken and catfish forever. Well...almost.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]No matter what you find in a catfish's innards, the fact remains that you will do consistently better when you bait them with something natural to their environment and something as fresh as possible. There ain't much that they will not eat, if they are hungry, but when they are picky they will eat the prime (fresh) stuff first. [/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]A good example is Utah Lake. The channel cats in Utah Lake seem to love a nice bloody chunk of fresh carp meat or sucker meat. They also readily accept white bass parts with gusto. On occasion, a whole minnow works better than anything else. Of course, a plain old crawler is always a good bait, if you can keep it away from the pesky mudders. My point? You can sometimes entice cats with the smelly dough baits favored in the slow murky waters of other parts of the country, but you will consistently do better with the natural foods. In many channel cat waters around the country, where carp are either not present or not prolific, the channels will often not get excited about carp meat when you use it for bait. I think they are genetically patterned in Utah Lake to dine on carpkind...of all sizes, any time of the year.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Any other observations?[/#0000ff]
[signature]

[Out4Trout]

[cool]Crawdads, eh?? Did you find them in the fish that you caught from U.L.? If so, I wonder if there really are crawdads in there (close to rocky areas, I guess) or if somebody went up to one of the mountain lakes (like Scofield, etc.) and brought some back with them. Come to think of it, I have seen crawdads in another low lieing body of water (Burreston Ponds near Mona).
[signature]

[nugs]

i'm not 100% sure about U.L. but the Jordan river is loaded with crawfish in places so i assume thay are present in U.L. as well. I'm tempted to throw out a trap next time i'm there.
[signature]

[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]There have been crawdads in the Provo River, Utah Lake and Jordan River systems since I first started fishing it in the sixties. However, they have a tough environment in Utah Lake. The carp keep the vegetation down (where the young 'dads can hide) and the predators, like bass and cats, munch on any crawdad that can't find a rock to hide under.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]They have probably declined a lot while the lake has been low, with little cover, but they will explode again with the higher water and better habitat. In lakes with ideal conditions and little predation, they can swarm like locusts in a short time.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]What really surprised me was the big hellgramite I found in the one cat. I used to catch a lot of channels up in the lower Provo River this time of year, and they all had been feeding on those aquatic insects. In fact, I did quite well on river cats with a flyrod and big black or brown wooly worms or nymphs. [/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Pollution and other water problems have largely wiped out the sensitive bugs since then. I am imagining that the stray 'grammite washed into the lake from one of the many full flowing tributaries this year. Mrs. catfish probably did not stop to check the geneology of the hapless critter before slurping it in.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Anybody who can find a good source for catching crawdads might want to consider keeping the smaller ones (too small for the cooking kettle) for kitty bait. Freeze them up and fish them whole or just the tails. That is definitely a food that cats are genetically programmed to munch.[/#0000ff]
[signature]

[hlmn]

I've seen crawdads in some of the small irragation ditches and streams that flow into UL. So I would gues that they could make it in there.
[signature]

[Out4Trout]

[cool]Thanks, Pat, and the others too. Good stuff there. Also, now I think I'll keep the 'dads that I normally think are too small to now be used for the catfishin'.
[signature]

[Fishhound]

Idaho ? You continually surprise me. We'll have to talk about Idaho when we get to gether next time. Anyway, back to the topic.

Cat fishin - in the Ozarks. (This is where you'all find out that I'm just another hick from the sticks) Slow moving muddy small rivers, back water ponds and lakes, or the Missouri and/or Mississippi Rivers. In my experience, cat fishin is cat fishin. Cat fish don't bite, taste, fight, look, act or smell any different down where I grew up than they do here. However, the fishing traditions are somewhat different - mostly due to the "environment", I think.

I used crawlers, crawdads, chicken parts(parts is parts)that really stank, blood, bacon grease and leftover cornbread/biscuit dough, lima beans(I have no idea why, but, dang, they sure do work good), live fish(minnows or panfish), Yams and sweet taters, cut up fish(cut bait), and that really gross stuff that I had to clean out of the bottom of the chicken feeders and pig slop troughs once every couple of days. Generally, we left stuff fester out in the sun for a spell before using it so it would gather up some good "momentum". That was needed because of where the cat fish typically hung out. You could find them only under the major debris piles in the eddies and backwaters. Because of the currents and hydrolics of the waters, and the certainty of loosing your hardware if your presentation ended up in(or taken in by a fighting cat) the debris tangles, we had to advertise our offerings from a spot just outside of their lair, so, the smelly calling card used for bait had to get their attention from a distance. The really big fish usually were hunkered down during the day and only cruised at night - I was a kid so I couldn't stay out late too often for the best fishing. At that time, or maybe I just didn't know anything(I was a kid and didn't need to know), we traditionally chummed for the cats prior to fishing the hole - in order to "prime" the spot and get the fish in the mood to feast or to start them looking around for the "food" they were smelling - we would use chicken blood(that was saved for this purpose when we killed the chickens on our farm) or that gross and sometimes gooey stuff from the animal feeding troughs - these things were left in the sun for a day or so(downwind of the house) then the concoction was plopped just up current from the intended fishing hole 10 to 15 minutes before putting in the baited hooks. Interestingly, One thing I have noticed out here - you'all sure do use BIG hooks where they ain't really needed - must be because you'all had money when you was a kid and could afford to throw away all that metal or, you're just better fishermen than me and never lost any of those expensive looking BIG hooks to snags, monster fish, or bad knots. When I first came out here, and peered into one of my new local friend's tackle box and saw all them "1,2,3,4,5,6/0" hooks in there, I was amazed ! and, thinking we were embarking on a safari for the "loch ness monster" or a man eating shark ! My friend was equally amazed that I did not have anything even close yet I was doing just fine, and actually, catching more fish and having less problems getting them off my line so I could fish some more. He don't use them monster meat hooks any more.

Sorry this turned out so long - in the next epic like chapter, I'll cover the facinating world and incredible array of applications in fishing with "Floats"(No, not those red and white thingies called "Bobbers" around these parts).
[signature]

[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]Hey Dawg, now you are bringin' back memories. I have also fished a lot of the slow moving and mucky waters of the midwest and southern states. I have fished with "catmen" who had inherited family recipes for catfish bait from several generations of catmen before them. When you got downwind of one of those guys, you wondered how the bloodlines ever got passed on, since most self-respecting females wouldn't get near them. [/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]In those murky waters, the cats are not as visually oriented in their feeding habits as are the cats in many of our cleaner western impoundments. They rely more on their olfactory senses to help them find their groceries. And, they tend to ingest anything...animal, vegetable, mineral or anything in between.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Fishin' is fishin' and fishin' is always fun, but somehow I just did not enjoy wearing a diving mask while annointing a gob of foam rubber with a stinky concoction that would qualify as hazardous waste in most states. Yeah, the fish fought hard and all that, but I also had a tough time taking any home for the pan. Couldn't get around the idea that if those fish ate what I was offering as bait, their flesh might be a bit suspect in terms of quality.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]There are plenty of clean water impoundments in the east and southern states where you can catch lots of big cats on more natural baits...like worms, minnows and such. But even those more sophisticated fish still accept "garbage baits". It's the nature of the beast.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]I still think one of the wierdest baits that I have seen work consistently is Ivory soap. It is a natural product, made from fat and lye, etc. and catfish somehow have a fondness for it.[/#0000ff]
[signature]

[Fishhound]

Yea, the ou'de'ouvre'ripe cologne is maybe the reason for the saying "the only girl that'd be with'm would have to be related". I hear tell, out here in Utah there's a similar situation right down south next to you'all's own Dixie. But enough of that hill-billy talk. Back to fishing.

I never really gave it much though about the quality of what the cat fishes diet back then. Every time I open a fish's stomach to look at the contents, I saw that almost every kind of fish had black goo in it's guts. When I was a kid, I just figured all fish were bottom feeders and ate bugs and worms most of the time. Anyway, somebody's mom would cook'm up so they tasted just fine - that's what was important.

My first major fishing frustration out here in the west, was adjusting to the clear water. It seem like for the longest time, all I did was spook fish from what seem like an awfull long ways away. I was also amazed that I could actually see fish in the water to know that I spooked them. Learning to fish for trout in almost completely transparent water for the first time, made me resort back to my childhood "commando fishing tactics".
[signature]

[Coldfooter]

[reply]
[#0000ff]I still think one of the wierdest baits that I have seen work consistently is Ivory soap. It is a natural product, made from fat and lye, etc. and catfish somehow have a fondness for it.[/#0000ff] [/reply]

[mad]SHHH! now your given way me biggest secret. Man!, and its taken me all this time to convince the everyone I was merely teaching the Kitties better hygiene! Besides, it aint me fault if the kitties forget to remove the hooks before scrubbin' their jaw bones.. Sheesh!

[]
[signature]

[fishluvr]

It's kind of funny to hear Utah Lake referred to as clean water. Most of the locals I talk to won't even swim in Utah Lake because they say it's so gross. I can't imagine what the other rivers are like that you guys are talking about.
[signature]

[cat_man]

I don't know there sure were a ton of water skiers out on Utah Lake this weekend for it to be considered a no-no for swimmin. I grew up in Orem, and I've swam in Utah lake down near Lindon Boat harbor on the sandy beaches dozens of times. We used to do a lot of skim boarding down there too. The only complaint I had was sometimes in the later summer/fall there would be an algae bloom of some kind that turned the water a pasty greenish blue. Eeeewww. Seriously though, the water in Utah lake is very clean -- just murky sometimes from the carp and wind churning up mud off the bottom.
[signature]