Lots of people have talked on this forum about this problem in their ponds. Years ago my folks pond had this same problem although we eventually got them all using small live BG for bait. One of them we got a different way. One day a friend came over to fish but had stopped to talk to my brother and was bouncing his jig in the water in front of an abandoned muskrat hole. Much to his surprise a large CC charged out the hole, grabbed the jig and broke his line.
I got an idea and we left the area for about a hour. I returned with a dip net and slowly crawled up to the area of the hole. I placed the dip net over the hole and hit the ground over the hole with the flat of my hand and out came the fish. 5 seconds later I was standing on the bank with an angry 10 lb CC thrashing in the net.
Large CC seem to like spending daylight hours in holes (see noodling). Not everyone has muskrat holes but maybe you could use large dia pipe capped at one end or old milk cans and duplicate this scenario. These are often recommended for spawning structure. Give the CC a few weeks to "move in" then sneak up and place the net over the end. Perhaps you could have ropes tied to the open end that run up on the bank. Tie them to the ATV and after some quiet time hop on, start up and haul out. Speed and surprise I think would be the key. What do you all think?
