We had Tori, Austin, Kayden, and Bentley out for a full day of fishing. With a recent cold snap bait was very challenging. We started our morning anchored up in a small pit after marking a ton of bait and giant fish. Unfortunately, we found zero bait in our gill net and we found out the sonar marks were giant carp.
We moved to our next location and started dragging baits in about 10 foot of water. Our gill net was very productive pulling in all kinds of species, including gar, gizzard shad, and catfish. We were not bait rich by any means, but we at least had enough to get started. We let the gill net soak and continued dragging, unfortunately not getting anything to hook up. We did notice a lot of the catfish were hunkered down in the mud and not very active.
We changed tactics and moved out to the main river fishing on some channel ledges. We marked a ton of bait and a couple nice fish. We sat on anchor for a little while with the gill net soaking and we caught two nice fish around 15 pounds, including Bentley‘s first ever blue catfish. Congratulations.
We jumped around to a few more locations without too much luck. This day was proving to be a very challenging bite as we marked fish, but had nothing but small dink taps. We continued to think through the river and recent patterns and decided to make a big rundown river.
Water temperatures were considerably warmer in this new part of the river, and it paid off very quickly finding a ton of bait. Everybody got a kick of watching the fish on the livescope and the cast net capturing them.
The weather conditions were rapidly improving and we had a nice sunny afternoon on our hands. We took advantage of this and went back to dragging bait. This decision paid off almost immediately putting our biggest fish of the day in the boat at 22 pounds. It’s not the giant that we were hoping to get our guests on but it was a really nice fight.
While we were dragging baits, we cleaned a bunch of the smaller fish and watched giant mark after giant mark go by the boat without a ton of luck. We caught another nice fish just under 10 pounds and cleaned them up for our guests.
It’s never easy when guests come out for a full day of fishing on the water and the bite is tough, but I feel like we worked hard and made the most of it. Thanks for joining us on the water and we hope you enjoy those catfish nuggets.
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