The Trophy Catfish were on Fire!

We had Donnie and Carson on the James River looking to land a couple of big catfish. We picked them up at the ramp and headed down river with a bunch of bait in the cooler. On our first anchor we had multiple rods getting hit at all times and managed to catch a couple of small eater catfish.

We made an adjustment to our position and fished a little deeper water and caught another small catfish right away.

As the sun got higher in the sky, the quality of the fish continued to improve. The next fish that came in the boat was Carson’s new personal best blue catfish at 11 pounds.

We started to scan some channel, ledges and deep pockets for any large fish we could find. We found a group of four fish hanging out together. We anchored up on the fish and waited them out for over an hour when our rod folded over. The fish used the current to its advantage to stay deep in the water column and had a couple drag peeling runs, followed by giant sweeping head shakes. Stan was ready with the net while captain Dan coached Carson through the fight. Carson had to lean back with all his might to pull his fish to the boat. Eventually we got him to the surface and scooped him up in the net. Carson broke his personal best again with a catfish tipping the scales at 40 pounds.

Welcome to the trophy club!

We set the rods back up and continued to wait out this cluster fish. We didn’t hang to wait long until another rod went down. We could tell this was another big fish after a long, slow takedown and some giant head shakes when Carson picked up on the rod. Carson now had a feel for how to fight these fish and was able to fight this one to the boat mostly on his own. When we finally got the fish in the boat, we weighed it at 34.6 pounds. Congratulations on another trophy fish.

While we were handling this fish, another rod went down and Carson jumped right on it. This wasn’t as big of a fish and it was all beat up from the spawn. This fish weighed in at 15 pounds.

We are pretty confident those were three of the four big fish we marked and we waited out the fourth, but the rod never went down. We started to scan the river a little bit more and found another cluster of fish hanging out around a thick bait pile. We had about 30 minutes left in the trip and we threw out fresh bait and waited. With about five minutes left in the trip a rod doubled over and Carson was in for another big fight. This fish was not easy to bring to the boat as the current was ripping, but Carson hung in there and continued to fight the fish. When we got the fish in the boat, it was our third trophy fish of the morning weighing in at 37 pounds. Carson just about fished us out of trophy chips for the day. What an awesome experience.

Thanks for joining us on the water. We hope you had as much fun as we did. Can’t wait for the next trip.