Personal Best Blue Catfish still eat in the Rain

Jordan, JJ, and Garrett came out for a catfish trip on the hunt for a trophy fish. They were troopers coming out for a night trip during a cold front with rain in the forecast. At the time of launch, the rain was coming down pretty good, but we had our Bimini top up to keep everybody as dry as we could.

We had fresh bait in the cooler and got right to fishing. It didn’t take long for a few blue catfish to start hitting the deck.

We were picking through small fish and decide to make a move to look for a larger fish

We moved down river and started fishing structure, catching a couple small fish, but not catching the big marks that we were sitting on the graph.

The river had recently dropped 15° and the big fish we were marking did not want to eat. We continued on cutting fresh bait, casting the rods out, and hopping around, from spot to spot, looking for the big bite.

Towards the end of the trip, we finally got a rod to fold in half and the battle was on. This fish was coming out of some structure and swam right for the channel ledge using the current to help it gain an advantage over us. The fish was no match for the hellcat revenge rods which handled the fight beautifully. Before along the fish was at the surface thrashing around and we were able to scoop it up with the net. A little shy of a trophy fish, this fish was weighing 27 1/2 pounds and right around 37 inches still a heck of a blue catfish abd a new personal best.

This was a short trip and time goes by fast on the water. Out guests were able to see how impressive some of the blue catfish can be on the James river and how fired up they get this time of year.

Thanks for coming out to fish with us. We hope to see you again soon.