New here with a jug line question

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Tessaend
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2024 11:49 am

New here with a jug line question

Post by Tessaend »

Hi y'all. My name is Tessa, and I live on Lake Granbury. I fish from the bank, a kayak, and a jonboat.

Last week, I set out jug lines for the first time. I went in at about 2am and returned around 8 or 9am to check them. One had a nice big blue cat on it but the fish was dead. It's mouth was wide open like they get when they die from lack of oxygen, but I don't actually know why it died. I don't think the jug line would have kept him in an area without enough oxygen, especially since the lake is turning over so the layers aren't really defined right now. It was able to move and was about 100 yards from where I'd left it. I used a circle hook, around 6/0 and it was a good hook-up in the lip. The only thing else I noticed was that it had a few wounds on its skin like small lacerations. They could have been made by the main line (twisted cord like kind string) or the leader line (30lb mono) if it had been somehow really twisted up but manged to get untwisted before I pulled it up.

Anyone know what I did wrong? What could have killed it? I really want to leave some jug lines out over night, but I don't want to waste fish. Is there something I should do differently to prevent fish dying on my line? I only left 4 out that night and that was the only one with a fish so I'm 0/1 for live fish on a jug line and I'm a little nervous to try again with that kind of record.

Thanks for any help or ideas.
Tessa
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Neumie
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Posts: 4032
Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2004 10:10 pm
Location: San Antonio or Rockport

Re: New here with a jug line question

Post by Neumie »

I think you're just unlucky. The only thing I would recommend is checking the jugline more often.

I've only jugline fished a couple times when I lived in DFW. My friend built rigs called "Flagging Jugs" where we could visually see when we had a fish on the line. Works exceptionally well. We set the juglines for catfish and then go fish for bass, sand bass, hybrids, which ever.
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