Not a Catfish, but a big fish none the less!!!

Well, it was a rough day on the river today. Got on the water around 0930 hours and began the search for bait. Took alot longer than I expected to find enough bait but finally did.

Anchored into the first hole and got a whole lot of nibblers but no takers!

Headed to the confluence and somewhere along the line the transducer came unsnapped out of the mounting bracket. So being equipped with the rubber boots I headed to shore to snap it into place. Got it snapped back into place and as I was turning the boat around to get back on the water, one of those damn rocks junmped up and snapped the bracket, therefore the transducer was no longer mounted and just flopping around in the water.

SO....just decided to head back to the ramp and pulled the boat out of the water to see if I could possibly re-attach the transducer. Got it "re-attached" with zip-ties and headed back to the water!

Fished hard, confluence, Missouri, deep, shallow and everywhere in between. I painted alot of fish with the new 917c but all I could get were the nibblers.

Finally headed back towards the ramp, made one last stop and threw out the lines. Sat down and about 10 minutes later the inside pole did a slow little bend. I grabbed the pole and starting reeling in. Joe asked me if I had him, I wasn't sure at first then I said yes. Then he asked if it was a biggun, I told him I didn't think so and then all of a sudden the fight was on! That fish just took off! I couldn't stop it, he just kept takin' line! A few minutes later, the beast was in the boat!





Not a catfish, but a fish none the less! I tell ya what, that was one heck of a fight that fish gave. It sure was fun fightin' him.

I used Shad, Asian Carp and MoonEyes aka "SkipEyes". Water was still a bit high and there was some debris floating down river. Water temp was 38-39* in most places but found a couple places where it was 40-42*.

 

Well I am guessing here, I'd say it weighed somewhere between 30-40 pounds. Just to put his size into perspective, I am 6'3" and 370lbs. When we got him in the net, the net handle doubled over when we tried lifting him in the boat! Now I gotta try to fix that!

Oh yeah! I had a 3-4 inch asain carp on the end of the hook!

 

Oh! He was definately fun to have on the line! That fish actually swam up river, then swam under the boat to the other side! It was a good fighting fish and really fun!!