2024-11/23 Fishing Report: A Day Full of Monster Catfish!

Nov 25, 20244 min read

We had a 7am trip this morning so we got to the ramp early to set up. The group arrived early so we jumped on the boat and took off for some fresh bait. With an inconsistent weather pattern, bait was deep and scattered. We marked schools of fish but were not able to catch much with the cast net. While we threw the net, we had the gill net soaking in the shallows. The gill net caught us a few pieces of bait and we were able to get started. Bait was proving to be tough but we set out the gill net at the first spot and got to work setting up the rods. The group was hanging out on the couches on the front of the boat and we started setting our AlphaBoardz out the back of the boat. Captain Dan had just flipped his second rod from freespool to the closed position when the board started screaming across the water. The highlighter yellow Hellcat started to bend over and the fight was on! After a chaotic fight, tangling up many of our lines, we had a nice 29 lb blue catfish to start the morning off. The guys were fired up and we reset our lines and our boards and continued dragging along.

We had a few bites over the next 10-15 minutes that didn’t hook up but soon after, we had a nice 15 lb blue come over the rail.

We could tell the bite was on so we continued to drag. We didn’t have to wait long until a planer board was smoked and completely submerged under the water. It popped back up and we saw the shimano reel start to scream drag. This fish did not want to come to the boat but we eventually wrestled him within reach of the net and scooped him up. Our first trophy of the morning tipped the scales at 36 lbs! What a fish! We grabbed some quick photos and returned the best to the river.

We had the gill net soaking while we meandered about and we started heading back towards the net to check it for bait. We were almost there when a rod went down. We brought a 15 lb fish to the boat and as soon as it hit the deck another rod took off. We completed the double when a very skinny, very long 31 lb fish hit the deck. The guys handled it like champs.

We were running out of bait and only had 1 gizzard shad in the net so we pulled up the rods and moved to a new section of the river to collect some bait. Bait was proving to be very tough on this trip. We marked a few schools of fish and tossed the cast net on them. The first group was a bunch of baby catfish. We moved to the next group and found some small bunker. We kept a few dozen in the bait tank and tried one more school which provided a gizzard shad. We put the gill net out and let the guys off at a ramp to use the restroom. When they returned, we pulled the gill net to find a few nice gizzard shad. The guys said they were ready to try to catch some eaters. We ran the boat to a new location that has been producing and it was not the right move. The heavy wind was blowing a tow of debris through the water. We grilled up some lunch while we waited for 30 minutes and it was clear it was time to move on.

While heading to the next spot, we were running in 8-10 ft of water when we hit something and tore up the prop. Somebody else must have lost a gill net to this object before because when we pulled up the motor, we found scraps of a gill net and 3 beat up prop blades. Never a good sign, but it happens from time to time fishing in a tidal river. We beached the boat backwards and picked the scraps out of the motor. After a damage assessment, we decided to head towards the ramp and fish there for some eaters for the last hour of the trip. We drove slowly and tried not to stress the motor out.

Once we got to the new spot, we chopped up some fresh bait and fan cast out our baits in water from 12 feet deep to 25 feet deep. The rods on the deeper side were getting hit the entire time we were on anchor. We caught a few eaters and fileted them up as they came in the boat. The washdown pump on the boat makes it easy to keep the boat clean as we work. The trip was wrapping up and a rod went down. We joked that it was fun to catch a fish at the buzzer and we cleaned him up real quick. As soon as we finished cleaning the fish, we looked over and saw a hellcat rod absolutely buried in the water. The fish swam to the boat, peeling drag as we kept the slack out of the line. We knew it was a special fish when it started swimming past the boat, against the current, and kept bending the rod over. It was a tough fight but the fish came to the boat and we slid him in the net. We caught a 52 lb monster at the very end of the trip and it was the best possible way to end the trip.