As Hawn mentioned above, cats do love the buzzin' Boolies-especially early in the year, if ya can swim them past big rocks or boulder lairs. They are in a spawning mode at this time,and won't travel far to search for food, but grab the morsels that swing in close to their hidey holes -a jig, of course, does cover water to make these contacts much better than still fished live bait. However, when cats are more active my son and I have an almost surefire JIGGING tactic for bigger ,hungrier catfish ; we'd take a small jig(size 8 hook) and tip with a maggot to catch a 3-5" bluegill or sunfish in the shallows. Then,leaving the 'gill lip hooked, we'd take a double(preferred) or treble stinger hook and slide its leader loop on our snap (which we'd previously attached the jig to, then place one prong of the hook into the side of our freshly caught bait. Score the sides with a knife for lots of blood, then cast to known hotspots. Work with slow pulls and pauses, often letting the injured bait flop around on its own near bottom cover. Of course you could pin the panfish on a bigger,thick hooked 1/4 to 1 oz jig for this method, but even for cats I like lighter spinning outfits and rarely use more than 12 # test braid (preferring 5# power pro with the little jig set-up, even for cats up to 20+ pounds). This lighter cat technique isn't for everybody, but is VERY productive -just keep your bait fresh (catchin' them at intervals is half the fun!).
