MSrivercatfish.com

A friend of mine, Demetrius, from over in KY came out to fish with me on Saturday, September 5th.  Our fishing adventures go back 4 or 5 years and we’ve had some GREAT days & some not-so-great days on the mighty Mississippi river.  We had a day a few years back where Demetrius caught a couple of 40 class blue cats and finished the day with a beautiful 52 lb Flathead.  Those are the days that keep you coming back for more.  On the flip side, we’ve had some days when we couldn’t buy a bite.

Fortunately our latest trip turned out to be one of those good days.  With the water up over the dikes a little bit, we planned on hitting a few upstream spots on some dikes and then fishing the revetment banks.  Our first spot proved to be good.  I had a couple good looking bites that resulted in no fish but the next one took it down hard and headed for the channel.  He fought hard and I was expecting a 40 lb fish.  To my surprise he was only a 23 lb Blue.  I didn’t have time to ponder my disappointment, as one of Demetrius’ poles headed down.  He played the fish while I tried to get mine out of the net.  I netted his and then we took turns taking pictures.  His was a 20 lber.  Nothing huge here but, hey, it was our first spot.

We fished a few more similar spots and were disappointed with just a couple tiny taps.  So we headed to the revetment bank and found a promising looking spot.  What can I say??  It WAS a GREAT spot.  We through out some big skipjackheads and a couple fillets.  Demetrius’ pole withthe big head went down and the fight was on.  It was quickly obvious  that this was a good fish.  Not too long after all this started, the fish got hung up in Demetrius’ other line.  Then things got interesting.  As the fish started coming in, it hung up his other rig in the rocks.  So it got to a p0int where Demetrius could no longer gain anything on the fish.  The fish rolled on the surface behind the boat a ways and we both looked at each other.  Wow, this is a good fish!

I came up with a good idea.  It was actually a great idea, now that I look back on it, LOL.  Since the fish couldn’t come to us, we were going to come to him.  I got up to the front of the boat and started letting out more anchor rope.  We finally got to him and prepared the net.

As if things weren’t interesting enough, Demetrius’ 3rd rod took a dive and that fish started heading out.  I had just let anchor rope out and I grabbed the rod before he snapped off my rod holder!  This was another BIG fish.  I fought him for a while and he got into something.  I don’t know what it was but that one was not to be.  I then refocused on Demetrius’ fish.  I managed to get him in the net and Demetrius cut the other line holding back the fish.  We got him in the boat and life was good.

He topped the scales at 69 lbs.  Very nice!  I wish we also knew what the “one that got away” weighed.

69 lb Blue Catfish

We fished a few more spots before we called it a day on account of storms moving in.  I caught a beautiful flathead that was truly a “Yellow Cat”.  He was gorgeous although he only weighed a couple pounds.

What a day!  Another great one for the books!

Shane