First catfish trip of the season

[bigfish4me]

Well....the water finally receeded enough to go out and target catfish....so the plan was set for me to meet my buddy at the ramp at 7:30 pm. At 5:30 i left the house to go catch bait....i had visions of 5-8" chubs dancing around in my head....but it was not meant to be. It seems that all that high water i was loving while catching all those carp completely rearranged 3 of my 4 best bait holes.....in 15 years of catching bait on that creek last night was the first time i ever walked away from it with an empty bucket. At 6:30 i am staring at an empty bucket......this has never happened to me before so i make one last ditch effort and make for the pond i take the bammer to all the time. I had about 15 minutes to fill the bucket or else i was going to be late at the ramp.....managed to eek a few small chubs....so i hit the pond for sunnies, usually the big ones go back...not tonight 5 & 6" bluegills....i managed a dozen sunnies and gills and made the mad dash to the ramp.

I made it to the ramp a little before 7:30, as we loaded the boat up i told my buddy that this was the most dismal bucket of bait i had ever lugged down the river. He assured me that he had a good feeling about a hole he has been fishing....man was he right. It didnt take long for the first bite of the night....12 lb flathead at 30" on a small chub. The second fish came aboout 15 minutes later and was 15 lbs and 32"...on a chub. I had a few swing and misses and before you knew it we were out of chubs and staring at a bucket full of big sunnies. I decided to cut one in half and toss the head section out.....i definitly wasnt too confident....man was i wrong.

The third fish of the night was the one we have been looking for....It ate a noggin on my lighter outfit...20 lb braid. This fight lasted a solid 20 minutes.....it never takes that long, after the initial hook up this fish was peeling line at will...my partner cleared the lines and pulled the stern anchor and i had a pretty clear battle field. We were sitting in 12' of water and stayed straight up and down on this fish for what seemed like an eternity and he wasnt budging off the bottom. I was starting to worry.....didnt want to put too much heat on him because i was worried about him being hooked deep and chewing through the leader......the first glimpse of him and all i could say to my buddy was were going to need a bigger net, we have a slob here.....ill tell you what, i was as tired as that fish was when hew finally hit the deck....still dont know how my buddy got him in the net because his head took most of it up. The fish hit the deck and high 5's and holy shits were in order......38" and 29 1/2 lbs.....dam quality fish for our waters. We got 2 smaller ones after that and pulled the anchor to head back to the ramp around 11:30.....moral of the story...dont be afraid to try a new bait when plan A dont work out. What a great night out on the water.

[Anders]

couple nice set of whiskers there

[bigfish4me]

couple nice set of whiskers there

It was definitly a good time out on the water....we busted off a few good ones too....i admit it...i got lazy and didnt re tie after the 29 lber and it cost me a bite on a huge piece of bait...probably another slob....we wont be making that mistake again.

[bigfish4me]

I dusted off an old trick we use to use shark fishing.....to keep a live bluefish away from all the other baits we would tie a clothespin off on the bow rail with a short trace of mono and simply clip the line into the clothes pin.....you would always hear the tell tale snap from the pin before the clicker went off. Its kind of fuzzy in the pic but you can see the clothes pin with about a 6" trace of mono i simply attached to an eye for the boat cover.....the pin pole was hot last night, cast the bait out and let it settle and then clip the line and open the bail.....instantly turns any ordinary spinning reel into a bait runner.