Stacking up Trophy Fish

We had Tim, Thomas, and Helene out for an evening guide trip. Thomas was really wanting to get on some big fish so we put a plan together and got right to work. We had a bunch of white perch in the livewell when our guests arrived and it was game on.

We started the evening by drifting through a bunch of schools of fish and to our surprise none of them hooked up. After giving this tactic 30 minutes without any bites, we knew we had to take a slower approach.

While we were drifting, we were able to scan the bottom of the river for fish, and we found a couple piles of fish stacked up on channel ledges. We anchored up on some structure and it didn’t take long before her first fish came in the boat. This blue cat weighed in at about 7 1/2 pounds.

This fish really got the ball rolling, and there was a very consistent bite the rest of the trip. We were watching a small fish mess with a live bait for a couple minutes and then to our surprise the rod folded in half and started peeling drag. The fish came up to the surface and was thrashing. We could tell it was a big fish. Thomas battled the fish all the way to the boat until we were able to scoop it up in the net. We weren’t even an hour into the trip and Thomas already had his trophy blue catfish weighing in a 35 1/2 pounds.

Awesome work buddy, welcome to the trophy club!

We didn’t have to wait long for another rod to go down, this time coming out of the shallows. The fish immediately ran for deeper water, then changed its mind and ran back up into the shallows. This made for a very chaotic fight, but Thomas handled it like a pro on the Hellcat Revenge spinning rod. When the fish surfaced we thought it was another trophy blue catfish but it fell just shy at 26 1/2 pounds. We measured the fish and he was just shy on length as well needing 38 inches but measuring in at 36 1/2 congratulations on another great fish.

This spot died off a little bit so we moved to the other side of the river and rods were getting hit before we could get them all cast out. A few minutes into that anchor, a rod went down and stayed pinned to the bottom. Thomas has pulled the fish towards the boat, but it clung to the bottom and wouldn’t let it go. Thomas stopped reeling and let the rod wear the fish out. When it surfaced, we were all excited to see a really nice flathead catfish coming in the boat. A little shy of a trophy fish at 37 inches and 22 1/2 lbs, it was one heck of a fight.

The sun finally went down and we spent a little bit more time in this spot, catching one more blue catfish around 15 pounds.

The bite slowed in this area so we started to reel rods in so we could move to another location. When we got down to the final two rods, one of them felt like it was hung up in a rock, but Captain Dan felt it start to swim away, so he called Thomas over to the rod. We could tell quickly this was another really nice fish. Despite the current, it was holding to the bottom and had some violent runs to try and find cover. Thomas won the battle and we pulled a huge flathead catfish in weighing 31 pounds.

That made two trophy fish for Thomas on the night. Welcome back to the trophy club!

With all the rods in the boat, we moved to the next spot and missed two big takedowns in the first 20 minutes. This was our last spot for the night and we ended up sitting there for about 45 minutes to an hour and ended up catching a few more eater size catfish.

We clean the fish for our guests and sent them home with a lot of memories to go with their fillets. Thanks for joining us on the water. We hope to see you again soon.