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I got away on Wednesday morning to do a little catfishing after I dropped the kids off at school.  The water temp is dropping fast.  It was 65 degrees.  I found a few decent shad and set off to find some catfish!

I pretty much spent my time on the wing dikes.  Fished some downstream sides and upstream sides.  I caught 1, 2, 7, 8, and 10 lbers for my efforts.  The 2lber was a flathead.  Finally on my last spot I anchored just upstream of the dike.  I hooked up my biggest shad and tossed it out there.  I also put a couple other poles out with smaller offerings.  After about 10 minutes my pole with the big shad went down hard.  He took off and the fight was on.  There was some decent 12 ounce current in this spot, so it wasn’t easy.  I managed to get the net under him and he weighed in right at 30 lbs.  I was hoping for a nice 30 lb Flathead but I’ll take a blue catfish if I have too!  It’s always nice for the last fish to be the best.  Of course, you will take them any way you can get them!

Another great day on the river.

Shane

The water continues to go up, down and back up.  I believe it is cresting today and will start going back down again.

I went out on the 19th of September and didn’t have too much luck.  I had a terrible time catching bait.  I spent 2 hours throwing a cast net and only had about 8 small shad to show for my trouble.  The water had cleared up quite a bit and I was sure that the skipjack would be biting.  No such luck.  All of my “normal” spots produced absolutely nothing.  So I went fishing with my 8 small shad.  I ended up catching a 5 lb blue and a 7lb Flathead.  I did lose one other fish that I estimate in the 15-20lb range.  Got him all the way to the boat and he got off just before I could see him.

I decided to go out this past Tuesday (Sept. 29th) and ended up having not too bad of a day, although nothing of much size.  Overall, it was a very slow day.  I had a little trouble getting bait but I ended up with a good supply of small 4″ shad.  The water had come up so much that all the wing dikes were under water, so casting for skipjack wasn’t a possibility. The logs and trash in the water was real bad.  I really had to be careful driving the boat, as I just had my prop repaired a couple weeks ago.  I fished for 4 hours and only had a 5lb Flathead to show for my efforts.  That is, until I fished my last spot, which was a big cut.  This cut is large enough to where I can anchor in the back current going back to the main river.  In this last spot I caught a small blue and flathead (2 lbs a piece), a 5 lb Flathead and a 20 lb Blue.  They all came out of deeper 70 foot water.

So, like I said, it was a slow day until the last spot.  5 fish doesn’t sound too bad but when they are mostly lumped in the last spot, that’s a lot of “slack” time.

Here’s a few pictures! Until next time…

Shane