Catfishing with jugs can be described as organized chaos or disorganized insanity. Either way, any angler taking on the challenge of free floating a dozen or more bobbing fishing canisters in a lake or river will learn quickly enough what works and what doesn’t.
What needs to work is an orderly layout and monitoring of all the cans put into the water. Setting a string of catfish jugs cannot be a free-for-all event of trying to see how fast one can exit jugs from the boat. There has to be some order to the event; otherwise the whole process will quickly get out of hand and become unmanageable.
“There are a couple schools of thought on throwing jugs,” said Mark Cockrell. “They are simple in design, but can have different results. One idea is to simply put all the jugs out on the same side of the boat. This hopefully keeps the boat out of the equation and adds to the ability of the fishermen to keep an eye on one string basically all in the same area.
“The other way is to toss half the jugs on one side of the boat and the other half on the opposite side. This works, but I have found it more tedious to monitor everything if you’re doing it solo. In this scenario it really helps to have a fishing partner along to help out and two jug-hooking poles.”
But his approach can change, depending on what he finds when he gets on the target lake.
“Conditions on the water can really be the deciding factor,” Cockrell said. “If there is a pretty stiff breeze, then I keep all the jugs on one side hoping they will stay together in the same general area. I can then just troll along behind them, keeping a watchful eye out.”
Other possibilities on calm days are to set one string out, then motor down the lake a couple hundred yards to set out another string. Circle back to pull the first string, and then go pick up the second one.
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