We Couldn’t Believe We Caught Two of this Species

Harold and Allison came out to the James River to try and catch some trophy fish. We started the morning off well before the sun came up looking for striper and white perch. From the second we pulled up we were catching white perch and striper left and right.

After the first hour, we had caught nearly 70 fish and the biggest surprise in the morning showed up when a rod went down and there was a flounder on the other end. This flounder was too small to keep so we tossed it back and couldn’t believe what we just caught.

We continued the onslaught and as a sun started to come up the bite was dying down. We couldn’t believe it when we caught another flounder right before the sun came up.

We transitioned to catfishing and ran to a different section of the river. We used the motor on spotlight and cast six rods out with some cut and live white perch. Right from when we got the rods out they were getting taps, but it was a little while before the first one went down. The first fish in the boat was a big fat catfish weighing at 25 pounds. We did not get a picture of this fish, but I promise it was a chunker.

We set the rods back up and shortly after an 8 pound catfish came in the boat.

We reached slack tide and we waited it out until the river turned around and started flowing in. During the slack tide, we caught a 15 pound blue catfish.

While the 15 pound fish was still in the boat, his 21 pound best friend snuck up to take a picture with us.

We let the tides start to pick up a little bit, but the bite had died off in this part of the river so we made a run up river to a new section. While scanning this section with our sonar we saw a ton of big marks and decided to anchor up on a channel ledge. Once again, the rods tapped, but nothing was going down. Eventually, a rod went down and Alison reeling in a 16 pound blue catfish.

While we were photographing this fish, we looked over and an orange hellcat rod was folded in half. Harold jumped on the rod and immediately the fish was pulling drag. This fish was coming out of a very deep section of the river so we took our time bringing it to the boat. His air bladder didn’t decompress so we had to pull all the rods and go chase him down. We netted the fish and brought him in the boat and burped him a couple times until his belly deflated. After weighing the fish, Harold had another trophy fish to add to his résumé with a 44 pound 47 1/4 inch blue catfish. What a catch.

Welcome to the goober time guide service trophy club.

We only had a little bit of time left in the trip so we ran to one more spot and fished it for about 45 minutes. We had a couple nice takedowns, but nothing hooked up. Thank you for joining us on the water. We hope to see you again soon.