In my continuing efforts to win — or at least create — The Mike Barnabi Total Outdoorsman Challenge, I have a tendency to try different things on a fairly regular basis.
From frog gigging to catching turtles to some things I’ve done with Cousin Bill that I can’t mention here, I like to change things up as much as possible.
One thing that was introduced to me last year — juggin’ as people around here might refer to it — I kind of took a liking to. It’s fairly simple. It’s laid-back. Watching the jugs take off is pretty cool, and it seems a fairly effective way to catch catfish. This new-fangled way to fish — well, to me anyway — was brought to my attention by none other than the Guru of Goose, Jack Hupp. “You up for some juggin’,” he asked on more than one occasion. Eventually I had to check it out.
It works like this: essentially you tie some heavy-duty line onto a milk jug, bait it and throw several of them out into a bay away from the hordes of boaters on the main lake. Then you sit back, drink coffee, talk and wait for one of the jugs to take off. And I mean some of them take off, Jaws-style. I kept wanting to say, “He can’t with three barrels on him. Not with three he can’t!” No, but a decent catfish can certainly take a milk jug for a ride. Now, you don’t always catch them, especially with my netting skills. Sometimes the jug takes off only to stop almost immediately. That means for whatever reason the fish wasn’t that interested, didn’t get hooked, etc. Eventually you can tell when a fish has a good chance of getting hooked. Out of nowhere a jug will just take off. Occasionally one will go almost completely under water, which is almost always a good sign. If the jug takes off — and pretty much just keeps going for a while, there’s a good chance the fish bit hard on the bait and is hooked. Then Jack steers the boat and I try to net the fish and the jug all in one sweeping motion. If you played baseball and batted .300 that was a good average. Apparently that’s not the case in juggin’! On more than one occasion I netted the jug but somehow managed to miss the fish. Sometimes I would net the jug with one hand and grab the fish with the other, probably not the preferred method but I’m not a big fan of letting fish slip away if it can be avoided. We had plenty of action, but oftentimes the jugs would stop bouncing and we came away with nothing. In a relatively short late night/early morning we managed three nice catfish. Certainly not enough to win any tournaments but that’s not why we were there.
We were juggin’ baby! And it’s just a pretty cool thing to do once in a while.
The Link LonkJune 20, 2021 at 06:00PM
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Juggin’ can be a fun, productive way to fish - New Philadelphia Times Reporter
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