Hour or Two on the Thames

[Beats]

So I was fishing the usual couple of spots I fish near downtown London after work on Friday. I didn't see a sign of a bass and just kept moving from spot to spot. I got to the last spot I decided to try before going home and started casting in a fan-like style for a few minutes. After quite a few casts I kinda withdrew and was still casting but my head was elsewhere thinking about things besides fishing. I had been casting my usual small jointed orange Rapala that catches me most of my bass but had switched to a fairly heavy spinner for the simple reason that I could cast it further across the river and it had some sinking value to it. The Rapala works great but you can't cast it all too far without adding weight to it, but since there is alot of random trash/snags in this area of the Thames I opt for a floating lure most of the time which I can quickly get to the surface by simply not retrieving and letting the lure float to the surface. I had just switched to the spinner and was doing a straightforward retrieve perhaps a tad faster than the norm with the spinner running I'd say about 4 inches under the surface of the water. The spinner was about 1/2 way back to me from the cast I had made when WHAM! I saw a fish very quickly come up from the depths (not really depths since its shallow, but deep enough so I couldn't see it normally) and it nailed my spinner really hard. I thought it was a pike for sure since what I was was a long slender fish hit he bait near the surface and I saw the flash of the side of the fish as it turned sideways as pike do more often than not. I was excited as I had never caught a pike in the Thames that wasn't near a dam. The fish fought with strength...and just as I got it near shore I realized it wasn't a pike at all, and was a species I had never yet caught before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a 2.1 lb Channel cat that was my fist channel cat ever. Kinda cool. I weighed it on my digital boga grip style scale that i have. I couldn't believe that this fish would rise so close to the surface and nail this spinner just under the water's surface. I thought it was hard to get bullhead's to open their mouths to get a hook out until I caught this guy. All I got to say is thank God I had jaw spreaders in my backpack. The heads on these things feel like solid bone. He was out of water for longer than I would have liked due to the inability to get its mouth open at first. I had to let him back in the water for a few seconds to "catch his breath" before attempting to use the spreader on him. I got the hook out no problem and the fish was released back to the Thames. I had heard of channel cats in there before but had never caught one in there myself. Since moving to London a number of weeks ago I have caught both a white bass and a channel cat now by complete surprise (both of which I had never caught before) while fishing for bass.

 

All photos are of the same fish and of the lure that he went for.

[fatherof3]

nice pics and congrats on your first cat

[Marc Thorpe]

Channel cats fight good,we catch walleye fishing

They grow to be good size on the Ottawa,fight like champs