
Tim was looking to cross paths with a trophy blue catfish and bring home a cooler full of fish to eat. We started our trip at 6am with some brisk weather conditions. Tim’s sister-in-law brought her SONY A7III camera to document the adventure and we were able to grab some photos of a gorgeous sunrise as we motored out of the marina.

We made a run up river to grab some gizzard shad to use for bait. After a few minutes of soaking the gill net, we had enough bait to get started fishing.
We scanned with our Hummindbird Solix 12 sonar and found fish and bait hanging out on a channel ledge. We set up the boat to fish depths of 3-40 ft of water. We cast our rods out, spreading them to cover all our water depths, hoping the fish would show us where they were most active. The first anchor was slow, with our only nibbles coming from our shallower rods. Armed with that information, we put on dragging weights and AlphaBoardz planer boards and started dragging shallow. The action started picking up in shallow water but still no fish. We stayed patient and continued to mark fish and move along. Once we started getting deeper, we marked off the first goal of our trip, a trophy blue catfish! Tim handled the aggressive fish like a veteran and we were able to bring it over the rail of the boat.

The fish weighed in at 34 lbs, good enough for a trophy classification by Virginia Department of Wildlife standards. Time we excited and we chased a few more active fish looking for another trophy.

We marked a lot of bait and a lot of fish and caught another small fish but none of the trophy fish we were seeing on our graph.

Its always amazing how quickly time passes on the water and we found ourselves with a little over two hours left in the trip with a coller of fish left to catch. We packed up and moved down river, sneaking the boat into shallow water, with wind blowing bait to a shoreline that was catching a lot of sun rays. This turned out to be the perfect combination and we spent the next two hours reeling in fish after fish. As the trip started to come to a close, we started fileting fish as we were catching them, so we could send our guests home with some meat to cook up and eat.

It was a gorgeous Fall day on the river, starting out cool but ended very comfortably. We packed up the boat and had a nice cruise back to the ramp, soaking in the sun rays. Thanks for trusting Goober Time Guide Service for your trip on the water! We look forward to taking you for another trip!
We had a great time with Capt Dan. Taught me a bunch of new techniques. Awesome experience.