how does a 7' medium heavy ugly stick sound. i try not to use my bass rods at all when catfishing, but sometimes i can't help myself to cast something out there on it to see what happens! i just saw on another website(can't remember which one), a couple of 60lb blues caught in the Potomac! that's definitely not something you want to hook into with a 6 1/2ft meduim action rod running 10-17lb test.
last year when we were out on the boat, we held a flashlight over the water and all the minnows would come up to it, and we caught them and used them as cut bait. i think they were shad, but i'm not sure. we were using 5/0 hooks, and fishing right by the 301 bridge on the potomac. we caught a few nice size cats. one was probably aroun 20-25 lbs, but most were around 10lbs. we probably should have been using bigger bait. those cats were right there by us, so i know there were some bigger ones around, but i was happy with that big i got anyway. this year i'm shoooting for at least a 40lber.