"Trotlines, jugs, fly rods, cane poles, rods and reels -- you name it and they use it up here to catch channel and blue cats. Pickwick has the big bluff banks that create perfect holding spots for catfish. They form rock bottoms with cracks in anywhere from 4 to 12 feet deep, immediately adjacent to deep water. Most people just pick a bank, start a drift depending on which way the wind is blowing and how much current is moving, and fish it out."

In the dead of the summer, when it's so hot, jugging is the preferred method and is mostly done at night. But Pickwick is not a place for small jugs. Forget the 1-quart bottles. You need more like the gallon-sized ones.

"There are some monster blues and channels in here that will take a small jug and run with it like it ain't even there," said George Williams of Tupelo, a regular at Pickwick. "I learned that lesson the hard way. I chased one 50-pound blue for two hours and never caught him the first night I was here. I got him up to the boat once, and almost had him when he took off again. That small bottle never did tire him out.

"During May and June, I'll jug along the bluff banks and catch all I could ever want to clean. Mostly they'll run 3 to 5 pounds. In July, I will still work the bluff banks during the day and catch plenty of keepers up to 3 pounds, but at night, I move out to the channel and drop the hooks down to 10 feet and catch the monsters. My biggest is 52 pounds. It was a blue, but I've had bigger ones on that I couldn't handle."

MISSISSIPPI RIVER
Of course, no Mississippi catfish story would be accurate without listing the Big Muddy as one of the top spots to fish. So we won't dare leave it out.

"I fish all over, but when I go catfishing, I usually go to the Mighty Mississippi," said Wilbur Thomas. "There's never a crowd, except in the fish box. We usually can fish until the ice chest or chests are completely full, and we always run out of room before we run out of steam.

"Personally, I like the simple approach. I try to find a sandbar just below a bend in the river where the current is good. In the summer, I'm looking to fish in 5 to 8 feet of water and I'm looking for any erratic break in the bank of the sandbar, either a point or a runout where baitfish will gather. Catfish will naturally gather around them."

In addition to his catfish poles, Thomas also takes some ultra-light rods with some casting-friendly hair jigs to use to catch bait. If he sees a school of skipjack shad, that becomes his priority.

"Catching skipjack can be fun, and it's also important," he said. "There is no better catfish bait on the Mississippi River than cut skipjack. That's what I want. If I don't have it, I use night crawlers or other cut fish."

Jugging has become a popular method of catching big cats on the river, especially in July.

"What I like to do is find a sandbar that I want to bank fish from and then go upriver and pitch my jugs out," said Sidney Montgomery of Jackson. "I'm looking for a bar where the current sweeps right down the bank. The same thing that makes it good for bank fishing makes it good for jugging. Once my jugs are out, I run over to the bank and start tightlining. Usually, I'll have about an hour before the jugs arrive. If any are missing, I run up, find them, take off the fish and return to the bank. I can do it all day long, rounding up the bottles and repositioning them in the same run."

Newcomers to the Mississippi River should be aware of the boating dangers that exist. It is a big waterway with strong currents and big tugs.