Mississippi River catfish gang up around these man-made, current-directing structures, making them great fishing holes year-round. Here’s how one guide approaches fishing around the rocks.
One of the keys to catching big catfish from the Mississippi River is knowing where to find them.
Almost any time of year, big catfish will lay up in deep holes, and one of the easiest, most-consistent places to find good catfish holes is around a wing dike.
Wing dikes are plentiful and found up and down many large rivers. Sometimes called a wing dam, a wing dike is a man- made barrier that, unlike a conventional dam, only extends part of the way into a river. These structures force water into a fast-moving center channel that reduces the rate of sediment accumulation, while slowing water flow near the bank.
Guide Bob Crosby of Madison focuses much of his fishing efforts on deep holes, often referred to as scour holes, that are created by wing dikes in the Mississippi River. These wash-outs typically have plenty of deep water, anywhere from 40 to more than 100 feet depending on the river stage, and some structure inside the hole that will provide a current break for catfish to hold behind.
“You don’t just pull up to a dike and start fishing,” Crosby said. “You have to learn to read a dike and the water moving around it to determine if it will hold catfish.”
Crosby said there are two phases to fishing wing dikes: when the structure is underwater and when it is out of the water. Typically in the spring, all of the dikes on the Mississippi River will be submerged, depending on the rainfall and snow melt upriver. He spends a lot of time during the fall riding the river looking for potential new areas and making notes about what he sees.
“You need to do some scouting to know when a particular dike goes under the water,” said Crosby. “That will change the current around it and how it fishes.”
When the dike is out of the water, Crosby immediately goes to the deep end and looks for currents, especially eddy currents, which move in a big circle around the end of the structure is much better than a straight-line current. If a dike has a good eddy current, you’ll see a lot of foam and debris around the end of the dike.
When the structures are underwater, Crosby looks for holes at either end: one between the bank and the rocks and one at the deep end of the dike. He often prefers the inland side if the water and current is moving too fast out in the river.
“Never try to motor over a dike; most of them are marked with buoys, but you can’t trust that,” he said. “Most charts will have them on the maps, and you also can tell by looking at the water. Most of the dikes are 100 feet or so long, but I’ve hardly ever found any decent fish anywhere except on the ends. I just stay away from the middle areas.”
Crosby is looking for the deepest holes he can find, but something like a washed-out tree or rock pile that has been exposed in the scour hole is often a gold mine.
When setting up, boat positioning is critical. Not too many years ago, how and where to anchor would have been a huge factor, but with a trolling motor with a positioning sensor that holds the boat in place, Crosby no longer has a reason to anchor and fish.
“Anchoring in the Mississippi River is tough business and probably the most dangerous thing you can do,” he said. “I have a Minn Kota trolling motor that has a feature called spot-lock. It will hold the boat in position with a lot less hassle and backache than fooling with ropes and anchors.”
Crosby will give each scour hole about 30 minutes to produce. He may move around the hole once or twice if it’s a big one, but he’s usually made up his mind on the first setup.
Crosby will motor into a scour hole using his electronics to look for catfish before he puts out rods. He said a good, deep hole with circular current will almost always hold some fish, but he wants to make sure he’s marked one or two big arches before he wets a line.
“The spot-lock works off the position of the trolling motor,” he said. “If I mark some good fish, I’m hoping that the boat will settle out near the edge of the current so it stays straight and the trolling motor is holding me into the edge of the current. Then, I can fan-cast rods to different locations in the hole, just as if I was tied down with an anchor.”
In a steady position, Crosby will fan-cast 8-foot B’n’M heavy action catfish rods around the boat. The baits are on the bottom, held in place by a sliding sinker rig with 6 to 8 ounces of weight on a short leader. He transitions from his 65-pound braided line to a 50-pound monofilament leader via a stout barrel swivel. The business end of the mono holds an 8/0 Octopus circle hook.
The other option is either bumping around the hole using the jog feature on his trolling motor or, in the event the boat won’t position without the stern swinging around is to fish the hole with baits suspended directly under the boat.
“B’n’M makes a 10-foot, Silver Cat Magnum rod that works great for helping spread baits out when you are fishing suspended,” he said. “I will stagger baits deep, just a couple turns off the bottom, and shallow, maybe about halfway to the bottom.”
In this situation, Crosby will double or even triple the size of his weights to keep the line vertical in the water column. He has installed heavy duty rod holders around the perimeter of his boat, which gives him the option of spreading his lines out even more to keep them from tangling.
The bait of choice is fresh-caught skipjack herring. The bait is often caught and preserved by several methods including vacuum sealing and freezing. Crosby points out that gizzard shad are also a good choice, and one bait that is rapidly gaining in popularity is Asian carp, an invasive species that has wreaked havoc on some inland fisheries ecosystems.
Wing dikes; what’s the point?
A first-time visitor to the Mississippi River often first notices the immense size of the river and later is intrigued by its many working parts, wing dikes among them.
The system of wing dikes was installed in the river by construction companies authorized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They were designed to divert the flow of water to help scour a navigation channel, and many of these structures date back to the mid to late 1800s.
Wing dikes are man-made, typically of stone, but some other substances have been used. Unlike a dam, a dike only extends into the water a short distance for the purpose of steering current flow to the middle of the river. In turn, this helps reduce sediment or at least control it so that shipping channels are less likely to silt in.
Typical construction methods involved constructing floating mats made from bundled willow trees. The mats were held in place by large ships while layers of rocks were placed on the mats until they sank to the river bottom.
Wing dikes are a history unto themselves, using technology from days gone by. In fact, many of the structures no longer function for the purpose originally intended, which was to increase the overall depth of the shipping channel. Later studies showed that weirs and conventional dams were more effective.
Piles of rocks extending into the Mississippi River certainly pose hazards to recreational boaters, especially when the rocks are submerged. Buoys are maintained for navigational safety but are frequently damaged by river traffic or floating debris.
The physics behind the effects of wing dams on sediment control is complex, to say the least. Recent research supports that while sediment and silt are removed from the main channel of the river, it is later deposited further downstream, which may worsen flooding conditions in the river.
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