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Mississippi River Catfish

Welcome to my Mississippi River Catfish Website!  My name is Shane Williams and I frequent the beautiful big river that's virtually in the backyard of New Madrid, MO residents.  It is truly a blessing to be this close to a river that offers such fine catfishing and a shot at a trophy catfish on every outing.

I put this website together as a means of sharing pictures, stories and adventures of my pursuit of trophy Blue and Flathead catfish.

Most Recent Catches

The details of my most recent catches are usually written on my Blog. 

2011

It's been a while since I updated my site.  Here's my new personal best that I caught back in the middle of September, 2010.  I caught this with my good friend Demetrius while we were pre-fishing for the Cabela's King Kat tourney.  Of course this big one came the week before the big tournament.

It was certainly a challenge getting him in and getting a weight.  He likely weighed between 80-85 lbs. People have told me that's the ugliest fish they've ever seen.  I personally thought he was mighty good looking :-)

2010

September 7th - Sorry for such a delay in my posts here on the site.  The river has been such a mess this year.  With high water being relentless on the mighty Mississippi river, it hasn't been very good conditions.  The heat has also been overwhelming this summer.  Usually we have some hot fishing days during the summer but WOW this has been crazy.  It's miserable when you touch your boat and burn your hand!

Anyway, I have got out a couple times here in recent weeks, although I have little to show for it.  Here's a blue cat I caught this past Saturday, September 4th.  He weighed a whopping 14lbs.

April 8th - This is my first update for 2010.  Hope everyone is having a great year so far.  The fact of the matter is that I haven't been out on the river since my last update.  Yes, I know, it's a terrible thing.  I've been itching to go the past couple months.  However, the winter has been excessively cold and the water levels excessively high.  The river here at New Madrid is just now coming down from flood stage.  I am hopeful that it will be time to get out there in the next week or two.  I started my boat up in the driveway a couple weeks back.  Everything looks good, so it is time to get out there on the water.  I'll be posting back just as soon as I can.

Another New Personal Best

It has been a while since I've caught 2 new personal bests in the same year.  But here we are...  On my outing this past weekend, I finally got a 70lb Class Blue catfish on the mighty Mississippi.  He was a beauty and a memory that will be with me for a long time.  That is...,at least until I catch an 80lber :-)  Read the full story on my BLOG.

I've been out a couple times since my last update.  Went out on September 19th and also September 29th.  I've started catching a number of Flatheads lately, although still none of much size.  7 lbs has been the largest.  Other than than, a few small fish and a 20 lb Blue cat.  You can read the full story HERE!

Had a great outing this past Saturday, September 5th.  My friend Demetrius joined me.  We caught 20, 23 and 69 lb Blues!!  Read all about it HERE!

I got to go out last Thursday evening (August 27th).  Tony Miller joined me for a few hours of fishing.  Had a great time and caught a number of fish.  I got 4, 5, 10, 13 & 20 lb blues.  Tony caught a 10 lb Blue.

This is a picture of my 13 lber and Tony's 10 lber.  Read more here.

New Personal Best!

Finally... the day I have been looking for!  This past Saturday (August 22, 2009) turned out to be quite a great day for catfishing on the mighty Mississippi river.  I'll post the full story on my blog.  If you want the short version, here it is.  He was 51" long and weighed 60 lbs!  After catching many Blue cats in the low to mid 50's, it was great to finally break into the next tier.  Read the full story...

My Mom and Dad came up for a surprise visit on July 28th.  My Dad wasn't counting on it but we managed to squeeze in a fishing trip on Friday morning.  A front had moved through on Thursday, so I thought we might have a tough time.  Well... we did.  Had several good starts that ended up stopping half-way through the bite.  We ended up catching only one fish that weighed in at 7 lbs.  He was caught on the upstream side of a dike in 60 feet of water.  At least Dad got to catch something, so it wasn't all bad.  The shad were hard to find but we managed a dozen or so.  We tried for skipjack at the dikes but didn't get a hit or ever even see any surface activity.

I'm embarrassed to say it, but up until last Saturday (June 13th) I have not been fishing since my last entry below.  The story is long and the reasons are numerous but I won't bore you with the details.  Mainly my old 1971 65HP Mercury had many "issues" but they finally seem to be resolved.  It sure was nice to get back out on the water and go fishing for my first trip of 2009!  I appreciate all the e-mails from you asking when I was going to update the site.  Now that the spawn is going to start, I guess I'll be ready to fish :-)

I wish I had a couple 50 lbers to post photos of from my trip but it wasn't THAT great of an outing.  I did catch two cats but both were under 10 lbs.  My first one was a small 2 lb Flathead.  He was beautiful, even though the photo doesn't do him much justice.  My second cat was a feisty 8 lb Blue that really got me thirsty for something five times as large.

I hope to be able to start fishing more, so this page will start being updated much more frequently.

(Yes, I'm a little out of practice with my "self-timer" picture taking)

I took my Dad out fishing on September 6th.  The water was still down pretty well and we were able to fish a variety of spots.  He ended up catching 3 blues.  Unfortunately they were all smaller than the one we were after.  The biggest weighed in right at 20 lbs.  Thanks Dad for a fun day!

I managed to get away yesterday (8-27-08) for a little fishing.  The river has dropped 16 feet since I was out at the end of July.  That means all the dikes are out of the water and the current has slowed way down.  I started the day off by catching a few skipjack herring.  They weren't real plentiful but I did manage to catch 8.  Over the course of the day I hit several dikes.  I caught 4 fish altogether: A 5 lb Blue and three 20 lb blues.  The 20's all looked identical but were caught in 3 different spots.  It was a good day and a joy to be out on the river

Can you tell the difference in the 3 fish??

Well the river sure has been a mess this year.  That coupled with boat motor troubles has really limited my fishing.  We had a meeting at church on July 27th - August 1st.  Tom Kinzel from Kansas City was our speaker and he was looking forward to doing some fishing.  We went out 3 days that week.  With the temps in the mid 90's, we only stayed out till we started cooking a little bit, then we came in.  He didn't catch anything real big but a few decent fish made the trips well worth it.  You can see all the pics in the 2008 section.  Here's just a couple of them here.

March 1st, 2008

I apologize for not posting much the past couple months.  The truth is, I haven't been fishing since the last time I posted!!  Little did I know from my last trip that my lower unit on my old mercury outboard was cracked.  Apparently some water got in there and froze.  So I've been looking for another lower unit for my motor.

Anyway my good friend Brad let me use his boat so I could do some fishing this past Saturday.  The water has been real high (33 feet on the New Madrid Scale) but has come down to around 20.5 feet.  I set out in search of Mr. Blue Cat.  It took me a while to catch some shad but after an hour or so I managed around 20 of them.

The first few spots did not provide even a bite.  I was, however, just happy to be out on the water again!!  That didn't last long as I finally managed to catch my first fish of the day.  I nice 8 lb Blue.  Not a big fish by any stretch of the imagination but certainly better than the 4 inch shad head I was using for bait.

I ended up catching 3 fish that weighed 8 lbs a piece before I found something a little larger.  The next fish didn't feel too much bigger but with the water temp at 37.5 degrees the fish were a little sluggish.  This one weighed in at 17 lbs.

The last fish of the day really put up a fight.  It wasn't so must the size of the fish though, as it was the current I was fishing.  I had to use 12 ounces of weight on this drop off and even that was questionable!  He weighed in at 20 lbs but felt much bigger initially.  For some reason the camera came up with a real lousy picture.  I have tried to correct it the best I can to show the fish, however it's not even worth posting.

That's all for now... Happy Fishing!!

First Fish of 2008!!

I finally managed to get out on January 11th, my first trip of the year.  The river has been all over the place in recent days and I wasn't too sure what the conditions would be like.  It was cold but not too bad.  The river wasn't too trashy and was around 39.5 degrees.

My first fish of the year came on my first spot.  He was a nice 10 lb Blue, caught in an eddy in 55 feet of water.

I went on to catch an 8 and 15 lb Blues.  Then at my last spot, fishing a nice drop off from around 27 feet down to 45, I hooked into this nice 36 lb Blue.  It was nice to start off the year with a decent fish!  All fish were caught on fresh shad.  The biggest was caught on a big shad head.

I went out on a nice dreary day, Saturday December 8th.  It was a rainy, cold, wet, foggy day on the mighty Mississippi river.  The fish must have figured nobody would be crazy enough to be out because they were biting good!  Caught 10 Blue cats all together.  Six under 10 lbs and then a 13, 15, 30 and 40 lber. 

The most difficult thing was finding bait.  For some reason I couldn't catch a shad to save my life!  However I managed to get 3 mooneye in the cast net.  Aside from a ton of drum and aquarium sized catfish (3-4"), that was it.  Finally I managed to get a 20 lb Asian Carp.  Well, you knew they had to be good for something, so cut bait it was!!

Most of my fish came on cut strips of Asian carp, including the 40 lber.  The great thing about carp is you never have to worry about a fish taking your bait, provided you put your hook in some part of the skin.  You almost have to cut the bait off the hook to remove it!

Here's a pic of the 30 and 40 lber!

On Monday, November 26th, I caught 10 cats on my outing.  3- 5 lbers, 6, 8, 2- 10lbers, 16, 20, & 28.  Water temp was 48 degrees and the river is starting to come up after all the rain we've had.  It came up 0.6 feet during the course of my trip.

Cold Water Flathead

He's not a large fish but I was pleasantly surprised to pull in this 13 lb Flathead a couple Saturday's ago (Nov. 17) while fishing the mighty Mississippi.  The water temp was 50 degrees.  He was caught on a chunk of cut shad in an Eddy.