Catfishin mission

[bigfish4me]

I keep telling myself that my time will come....be patient grassshopper, faced with a 6 day work week time on the water is tough to come by. The most convienient source for a decent fish fix is catfishing on the schuylkill river a few miles outside of Philly. The plan was to go searching for bigger fish tonight.......to quote the Deepster it was a hero or zero spread of larger than normal baits. Getting a decent bucket of jumbo baits is an adventure on its own, after a long treck down a local creek and into a tunnel i managed to put together a fine looking assortment of suckers and creek chubs that went from 6-10".....took a little more than an hour but it was well worth it.

We had a good night out on the water with alot of run offs, the problem with the big baits was missed bites and short run offs.......which screams small fish to me so it was time to ditch the all hero spread and stitch up a stomper. If they want to grab the tail end of my baits and mess with my batting average.....0 for 8 on the first 8 bites...ill give em something to chew on.

We gave it an honest shot with the big live baits, the dead stitched up baits out fished the live ones 10-1.....if thats what they want give it to em....and as usual the light outfit outfished the heavy gear by the same ratio.

[bigfish4me]

Now of course the corona bottle is purely used for scale purposes only.....i thought for sure this bad boy would get devoured by a heffer....it accounted for the smallest fish of the night...go figure.

[Tenacious]

Nice job there biggie, great post with pics to boot!!! Thanks for sharing

[gottaflylee]

How thats getten her done... Nice to see you got the bites and some great fish with them...

[LuckyLady]

Grasshopper haha I havent been catfishing in a very long time. My dad used to take us as kids and the biggest catch was the infamous snaping turtle that we could never see but probably ate my catfish and the hook and certainly would never give it back nor let us see him. Miss bridge fishing for sure!

[bigfish4me]

Grasshopper haha I havent been catfishing in a very long time. My dad used to take us as kids and the biggest catch was the infamous snaping turtle that we could never see but probably ate my catfish and the hook and certainly would never give it back nor let us see him. Miss bridge fishing for sure!

Catfishing is a laid back and fun time.....we do better than average and the fish over 30 lbs do fight pretty good....typical night starts aroud 6, stuff a beer in your back pocket and take a walk down the creek to catch bait....get a couple dozen good baits and lug the buckets back to the truck.....drink a beer. Its about 10 minutes to the boat ramp from most of our bait spots.....drop the boat in the water....yup you guessed it, gimme a beer....a quick 5 minute run up the river and drop the anchor upstream of some good structure and toss them out. The bite usually goes from 7:30 pm on until we either run out of beer or bait......9 times out of 10 we run out of bait first lmao.....But seriously we go out have some beers and some laughs and catch a mess of fish.

[Flatdog]

Hi great night out, another good bait are doves or pigeons tear out most of the feathers, pull the head off stab the body a few times to get the juices running trim the wingsoff screws with your casting, sit back and wait, next best bait are bull frogs or big toads stab them up and put it out they never come off the hook and the long the soak the better.

[bigfish4me]

Hi great night out, another good bait are doves or pigeons tear out most of the feathers, pull the head off stab the body a few times to get the juices running trim the wingsoff screws with your casting, sit back and wait, next best bait are bull frogs or big toads stab them up and put it out they never come off the hook and the long the soak the better.

Interesting angle Flatdog......we do well with FRESH bait.....you wouldn't believe what we go through to get the baits to where we are fishing alive.....sometimes only to pop a hole in their gut and toss them out....the super fresh dead usually last lest than 20 minutes...if you didn't get bit by then time to check your bait, we change our baits out often....which would be why we burn through so much bait and why we 9 times out of 10 out fish our buddies.....we do save the washed out baits for later and they do produce......but not near as well as fresh, lets face it a fresh fish rigged RIGHT fished in the current of the river is still limber and putting out the scent trail.....the catfish picks up the scent, follows it and slams it......Flathead catfish unlike other catfish are not scavengers...they hunt, a stiff bait might get bit....but we put up the numbers we do by fishing fresh bait.

Funny story about our fishery, when we started targeting these fish there were 2 documented catches in our entire watershed, our second trip out we caught one....only about 18" long but we got one......with in 2 years we figured them out and were catching 20 lb fish long before guys were putting together anything near what we could do in a night.....Honestly I fish for them when I am bored now, after my divorce time out on the ocean became much more attainable and that is my passion.....we still put some time on the river and the fish have only gotten bigger...they just dont excite me like they use to...then again thats because I get many more opportunities to watch the sun rise on my way offshore......and not much compares to that.

The bottom line, if you want to catch fish and get fish over 30 lbs....it starts with the bait, none of my friends put in the time we do to get a good bucket of bait.....then its location, ya have to know your targets habits......you can google flat head catfish and see guys noodling for them by hand and talk about dead wood......thats all fine and well for the south.....I am not in the south, our big fish come off of hard bottom structure, a drop off into a big pool....3' of water that drops off into 15' of water.....stagger the baits, head of the pool, mid pool and the tail end.....the fish will tell you where they are feeding and just keep feeding them....it really is that simple.....then again we have been doing it for 15 years so we should be good at it.