Last few trips on the river

[aplumma]

Well the catfish have been spawning for the last month and they had the worst case of lockjaw. I went out a few times with some friends and this is the report.

 

The first time out was with my niece and her boyfriend Tim. After a few bites and some dinks (less than 10 lbs) we finally got Tim to land this fish. It is a little over 34 lbs and took about 10 min to get to the boat. She was caught on about a 10 oz piece of Shad on the bottom like most of the fish you will see.

 

 

The next week it was time to take Earl and Hugh out for a go at the big fish. We started as always by getting bait. Which is netting fresh Mud shad or thread fin shad as you may know them as. They are about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 lbs each and get cut up into 4-6 pieces of bait each. The head seems to be the best piece and today was not to be an exception. Earl after giving the bait a good luck kiss heaved it out onto the flat in about 15 ft of water and caught this monster. We had a few other pulldowns but they were not the monsters we were hunting for so they were released boatside.

 

 

 

This week was the week to Take Mike and Harry out for a few fish. We left the docks at 10:00 and went in search of bait. The first lay of the net was a bust so it was off to my back up bait place were we got 5 shad in about 5 min. We ran over to the chosen spot by buoy 55 when we got a call on the radio from Vince to move down to another hole because they were just having a good old time with the teenagers ( cats weighing in the teens). We rolled down to their area and set up for some fun when the bite went flat. After an hour of no bites they rolled up and left us to wait for the bite to fire up when the tides flipped. We managed a few smaller ones and were eating lunch when we got a call on line one ( first rod on the left) and it was Harry's turn to get the rod. He picked it up from the holder and swept the circle hook into the jaw of the fish and it was off to the races. After a 50 yard run and Harry burning a little skin off his thumb we got the head turned and the fight was on. It lasted 15 min. with Harry having to finally sit down to finish the battle and this is what he caught.

 

 

 

All in all it has been a good early summer for the big fish. I wish I had taken more pictures but with the sun shining and good friends around you you tend to forget the camera but I will try to do better on the future outings.

 

Art

[Mike01]

Art, I'm curious to know what river that is. It looks really wide.

[splashhopper]

wow... nice cats...

 

the cats that i have caught are yellow on the top with white bottoms.. (only "dink" size too! lol)

 

are their different types of cats..

or are they just adapting to the colour of their particular waterbody?

[Greencoachdog]

Nice report, pics, and fish Art!!!

[huntervasili]

Beaties Art! Glad to see you're starting of the Cat season well.

[Daplumma]

The river is the Potomac river and is a large river 1/2 mile at some of it wider points. The Catfish we are catching are mainly Channel Cats but the biger ones are Blue Cats.

 

ART

[Leecher]

WOW I thaught I had hooked a big one when I caught a 5lbs'r ....Guess mine is just a minnow compared to yours

 

Great job Daplumma ....those are sure in the heavy weights catagory

 

Thanks for sharing

Leechman

[Guest Johnny Bass]

WOW! Monster catfish for sure!!They must have put up a heck of a fight!!!! Thanks for Sharing!

[ehg]

Those are some big cats!

Youse are lucky down there to get a freshwater species so big that 10 lbers are considered dinks.

Thanks for posting,

ehg

[Victor]

Gotta love how they get so big in size. They put up quite the fight.

 

Nice report!

[Spiel]

....Good stuff Art. I was wondering as I read if a couple of those were blues but you've answered that question already. You know I'd be willing to drive down there for some of that action. I'm going to have to arrange it one year.