They Earned a second Hellcat rod!

Xavier recently won a hellcat rod on his first trip with Goober Time Guide Service. He was quick to book another trip and brought his buddy Tristan along this time. We threw the cast net and caught a dozen giant gizzard shad for bait and then moved on to our first anchor of the day.

While scanning some shallow water flats, we noticed some bait balls and some large fish schooled up around them. We turned the boat around, tossed out the anchor and it wasn’t long before the rods started getting hit. We started the trip off with a nice eater blue catfish around 5 pounds. 

The rods kept dancing, but nothing was really hooking up until one rod completely folded over and the fight was on. This fish was coming out of about 4 feet of water and fought like crazy running up and down the mud flat trying to shake loose. We had that medium heavy Catch the Fever hellcat rod bent over and we knew this was going to be a great fish. This fish was smart and ran us back-and-forth across the rod rack, narrowly escaping breaking off on the motor. The fish was no match for Xavier as he soon got the fish to the side of the boat and fought him vertically in about 8 feet of water. This fish never really tired out but at one point he surfaced and we were able to scoop him up with the net. Xavier’s already a remember the trophy club, but within the first hour of his trip, he rejoined with a nice 33 pound blue catfish. That fish earned him another hellcat rod!

We stayed on this anchor for a little while longer with the same pattern, continuing little taps here, and there, and one more eater fish before we decided to move.

Since it was so early in the trip, we decided to run back to the ramp and grab the rod for Xavier, who had a reel in his car and we put the combo to use.

We made a run up river to try out a tactic that we thought would work. We ran back into a pit and started dragging boards without a lot of luck. As soon as the wind kicked up, we knew we had to get out of there so we ran back down river where we’ve been having a lot of luck. We spent the next two hours dragging baits without a single tap although we crossed over plenty of fish buried down in the mud.

We went back to targeting our strategy from the beginning of the trip and we got back on some fish pretty quickly. With a nice warm day and the sun beating down on the water, the fish were roaming in the shallows. While very active, the fish were finicky, and we experienced a lot of short strikes, even though we kept shrinking down the size of our baits. A couple more eater fish, and it was time to grill some burgers. We had a nice meal and then moved on to our next spot and put some more eaters in the boat.

The water was warming rapidly and typically that’s a good thing. In this instance, we believe it kicked off part of a migration pattern we’ve been expecting for a week or so. We didn’t mark many big fish the rest of the trip although we kept scanning and trying new spots. We did put a few more eaters in the boat. We ended up sending the guys home with a bag full of fillets for their families, a trophy chip, and a new hellcat rod.

Thanks for coming out again guys, we hope to see you during the shad run, which is sure to kick off any moment now.