Lessons from Catfishing

 

    Most anglers start out simple, knowing fishing as putting a piece of bait on a hook and casting it out, hoping a hungry fish will pick it up. However, so many of us deviate away from that. So many of us act like we're too good to fish worms under a bobber for trout or sunnies, live-line shiners to bass, or chunk for catfish. Even today, I do way more fishing with flies and lures than I do with bait, partially for convenience reasons, but mostly because I enjoy the challenge of force-feeding fish, attempting to pattern these creatures we don't fully understand, and finding the key that'll flip the switch in their brain to make them want to kill shit. However, the more I did this, the more I realized how much I loved being a little kid soaking pieces of sweetcorn for the carp in his local pond. In January of this year, I decided that for 2023, I'd make an effort to soak enough to make even BYU students jealous. 

    So there I was, on a cool August morning, eating my cheerios at the breakfast table, when I get a call from my buddy Kyle, asking me if I wanted to fish today at a spot on the river near his house. The fact that this was a private stretch of river with a dock, and Kyle was friends with the landowner, didn't hurt either. 

    Hell yeah, I responded, jumping into my minivan and racing down to the creek down the street from my house. A few minutes with a gold trout magnet later, and I had enough sunnies for a proper river catfishing session. 

    When I got there, the river was full on chocolate milk. Heavy rains upstate had brought the river up almost two feet overnight, and that Nesquik was chock full of floating logs and other assorted debris items. However, if cocoa water is good for anything, it's good for catfish. I sent out two rods with chunks into this quiet little cove. 

    After about half an hour of sitting there, twiddling our thumbs, a flurry hit. Kyle and I got several runs in a 15 minute window, managing to land a pair of decent channel cats. 

    With catfish, I believe in window theory. From my experience, bites will almost always come in waves or flurries, and if you're posted up in a spot where you know the fish will be, your best bet is to wait until they start putting the feed bag on. Several years back, when I caught my personal best channel cat at 12 lbs, my grandpa and I had fished cutbait for about three hours with no bites before my fish hit. As I was fighting him, the other rod went off, and my grandpa landed an 11 lber almost simultaneously.  

    Kyle and I fished for a few more hours, with no more real catfish bites. However, we did see a entire tree drifting down through the rapids. 

    After that, we decided to pack it up. We kept one of the channel cats, and afterwards skinned and fileted it at Kyle's house for the frying pan. Go out and soak some bait, you'll be surprised on what you'll learn. 

Cheers, fishy people.