Chuck Smick is an old college buddy who lives in Kentucky, but he's working a contract job at the Cleveland Wacker-Chemie Plant. We hit the water Sunday.
We started out drifting shiners. The trophy smallmouth we were catching for a while have all vamoosed now. Mostly small stripe, spots and tiny smallmouth.... with a few misc. decent fish were gobbling up our shiners.
We switched out to the catfish and found crappy (not crappie) conditions with the low flow, and a southerly wind that just KILLS my drift fishing. Ugh!
But we headed down to Moccasin Bend and found that the trophy blue cats are coming off spawn and if you work at it, you can find some willing to eat. Chuck found two of them. Whoop! Whoop! His second big cat measured out at nearly 44 inches, which should have made it a 40-plus pound fish. But in post-spawn condition, it only weighed 31. It was still a great fight, CAPTURED, IN PART, ON VIDEO.
I really wasn't expecting big fish so I didn't have my big catfish net. No worries. I fish Daiichi Hooks on my big cat gear and once they're stuck, they STAY stuck. I can honestly say that in the ten years I've been guiding, I've lost less than than 10 trophy catfish boatside... and most of those could be blamed on a "stupid guide error," and not the hooks. Daiichi Circles rule on big fish.
Our summer cat bite really hasn't been very good in the last week or two, but after yesterday, I have high hopes of it heating up (pun intended). That means life is good and gettin' better every day.
We started out drifting shiners. The trophy smallmouth we were catching for a while have all vamoosed now. Mostly small stripe, spots and tiny smallmouth.... with a few misc. decent fish were gobbling up our shiners.
We switched out to the catfish and found crappy (not crappie) conditions with the low flow, and a southerly wind that just KILLS my drift fishing. Ugh!
But we headed down to Moccasin Bend and found that the trophy blue cats are coming off spawn and if you work at it, you can find some willing to eat. Chuck found two of them. Whoop! Whoop! His second big cat measured out at nearly 44 inches, which should have made it a 40-plus pound fish. But in post-spawn condition, it only weighed 31. It was still a great fight, CAPTURED, IN PART, ON VIDEO.
I really wasn't expecting big fish so I didn't have my big catfish net. No worries. I fish Daiichi Hooks on my big cat gear and once they're stuck, they STAY stuck. I can honestly say that in the ten years I've been guiding, I've lost less than than 10 trophy catfish boatside... and most of those could be blamed on a "stupid guide error," and not the hooks. Daiichi Circles rule on big fish.
Our summer cat bite really hasn't been very good in the last week or two, but after yesterday, I have high hopes of it heating up (pun intended). That means life is good and gettin' better every day.
