Personal Best Blue Catfish for the Birthday Boy!

Kyle booked a trip for Lucas' birthday and brought Stone along. The goal of the day was to catch a giant catfish and we got right to work. We chunked up huge pieces of cut gizzard shad and started scanning for promising areas to fish. We weren't seeing much in the first location and made a run to a different stretch of river. For the next hour we marked great fish deep but they weren't interested in checking out the inside of the boat. After thoroughly working through these marks, we decided to run back down river and change up tactics.

Captain Dan scanned a few areas until he found a section of river loaded with bait and some nice marks roaming the flats on side scan. We spot locked the boat and fan casted out a bunch of rods. It didn't take long for one of the baitrunner spinning rods to start screaming. Captain Dan was closest to the rod so he gave it a few cranks to lock it in and Lucas took over the battle from there. This fish was screaming across a mud flat and when Lucas caught up to him, we started to realize we were dealing with a big fish. He had a pink Hellcat rod bent in half and started to throw giant head shakes.

Lucas and Kyle partnered up on the rod and locked in for a heck of a battle. This fish did not want to give up and the fight continued on for a few mintues. We got the fish close to the boat and he surfaced, saw the boat, and took pulling drag again. Lucas and Kyle continued to wear the fish out and we saw it start to blow bubbles and decompress it's swim bladder.

After that, it wasn't long before Captain Dan slipped a net under the fish and Kyle pulled it in the boat. This fish grew when it hit the deck and we realized we were face to face with a 45lb river monster!

Congrats on joining the trophy club for your birthday!

We reset the rods and Stone ende dup catching a. nice eater size fish in this location. The bite was slow all day and we decided to check on a few more locations. We continued to mark bait and fish but the bite was not on fire by any means.

At our last spot, we caught our final fish of the day in a very peculiar way. The fish had been munching on one of our baits for a while and while we were reeling in, we realized there was a small fish on the line. Not only that, but he was lassoed by the tail. This fish never made it fully into the boat before becoming unraveled but we touched the leader, it counts!

We packed up and got the boat back to the ramp. Thanks for joining us on the river! Can't wait for the next one!