New personal best flathead

Kinta, Mara, Xavier, and Elijah came down for a trip on the James.

We started the morning off, catching some fresh hickory shad while we sat on anchor. At our first location, we caught a few small fish and then decided to move spots.

We tried a series of spots working our way down the river, all of which were producing fish, but not quite the one we were looking for. The best fish of this stretch was about 18 pounds.

As the sun started to come up, we started fishing some more structure and rods were going down left and right. We had our best stretch of the trip catching a 15 pounder alongside a couple of small, smaller fish.

Shortly after another 18 pounder came in, then a few more small fish.

Finally, a rod out in the channel went down and the battle was on. The fish swam right to the boat and started fighting hard when it was under the boat. It came up to the surface quickly and we could see it was a really nice flathead, but then a dove back down and started fighting harder. We finally got it in the net and it was a 21 pound flathead measuring 36 1/4 inches.

The bite was pretty steady the rest of the trip and we caught a few more smaller fish. They were fired up, but we didn’t find the trophy blue cat we were after.

Thanks for coming down and we hope you had a good time on the James River. Hope to see you again soon