Katmaster Jr.
10-01-2006, 09:35 PM
Well my dad got a 40lb Blue Cat today, the fish looked a lot bigger but my scale told me it was 40lb. Here's the report.
We left for the Lake around 5 am, went straight to the bait spot and threw the net a bunch of times and only got 1 big Gizzard Shad. Well we decided to just go ahead out there with that one shad and planned on catching some bream with the bait poles or something. Only one problem though, I forgot to charge the batteries! Well after kicking myself a few times, we just decided to use the trolling motor and go out to a point not far away which is actually one of our best spots anyway. Very nice day on the lake, not as much wind this time thank goodness! So we anchored up, and cut our one Gizzard Shad up into a lot of pretty small pieces. Threw out 5 poles total since we didn't have much bait, took a while but schools of Blue Cats started coming thru. We had a bunch of runs that we missed that I suspect were smaller Blue Catfish. Then my dad hooked one that looked like it could have went 20 pounds but it got off. Then the action slowed down for a little while, so I decided to bait my 2 poles up with the last chunks of bait and throw them out towards the middle of the lake on the edge of the channel. Man it didn't take but a minute and I had some screaming runs, definitely Blue Cats. I don't know what exactly happen, but I just didn't hook them. When I started getting bites out there near the channel my dad put on the very last piece of bait the Gizzard Shad head, which was a huge head actually, and decided to throw it out that way near mine. Then he said, "Okay Zakk, we are going to go in about 10 minutes and try to get more bait, charge the battery, and come back this evening". I agreed with him and started packing the tackle and cleaning up the boat to head in....I look up and my dad's pole is just pumping slowly which is what our biggest Blue's have always done. Then he looked over and saw it doing the same, we both knew it was a nice Blue Cat biting that huge head, well my dad tried to hook the fish with no success. We got bummed for a second about missing the fish, and then my dad started to reel in, about halfway in his pole just loaded up like I've never seen it do before. We both thought he had got hung on something for a second, but then the fish started rolling and pulling drag! "Holy *Bad word*" my dad said, this fish was very big, we both could see that. It pulled a lot of drag and did a lot of rolling but the 10/0 Eagle Claw King Kahle hook was holding it good. After a 7-8 minute fight my dad had the fish beside the boat, I couldn't believe my eyes, this was the biggest fish we have caught in a long time, however we have hooked many as large and bigger that got off. I got it in the net, and grabbed the frame of the net to heave the fish in the boat. It started to thrash around very hard and almost throw my dads bait pole out of the boat. The first thing that was on our mind was getting a picture, and weighing the fish fast so we could release it.
First of all we weighed the fish, scale was bouncing around from the fish thrashing a lot but was staying around 40 pounds. I feel the fish was more like 45-50 pounds but could be wrong I guess. After that I got a few great pictures, including one of my dad releasing the awesome fish to fight another day. At first the fish would not swim off and it didn't look good, but then we remembered what the guide we went out with told us, you have to burp the fish if you get it from deep water. We did that and the fish immiadetely got better, my dad made sure it was ok, and the fish slowly swam down.
We are both pumped about this fish very much, we have had bad luck the past year or two for some reason.
I have 4 pictures to share with you, what do you all think.... 40 pounds or bigger??
We left for the Lake around 5 am, went straight to the bait spot and threw the net a bunch of times and only got 1 big Gizzard Shad. Well we decided to just go ahead out there with that one shad and planned on catching some bream with the bait poles or something. Only one problem though, I forgot to charge the batteries! Well after kicking myself a few times, we just decided to use the trolling motor and go out to a point not far away which is actually one of our best spots anyway. Very nice day on the lake, not as much wind this time thank goodness! So we anchored up, and cut our one Gizzard Shad up into a lot of pretty small pieces. Threw out 5 poles total since we didn't have much bait, took a while but schools of Blue Cats started coming thru. We had a bunch of runs that we missed that I suspect were smaller Blue Catfish. Then my dad hooked one that looked like it could have went 20 pounds but it got off. Then the action slowed down for a little while, so I decided to bait my 2 poles up with the last chunks of bait and throw them out towards the middle of the lake on the edge of the channel. Man it didn't take but a minute and I had some screaming runs, definitely Blue Cats. I don't know what exactly happen, but I just didn't hook them. When I started getting bites out there near the channel my dad put on the very last piece of bait the Gizzard Shad head, which was a huge head actually, and decided to throw it out that way near mine. Then he said, "Okay Zakk, we are going to go in about 10 minutes and try to get more bait, charge the battery, and come back this evening". I agreed with him and started packing the tackle and cleaning up the boat to head in....I look up and my dad's pole is just pumping slowly which is what our biggest Blue's have always done. Then he looked over and saw it doing the same, we both knew it was a nice Blue Cat biting that huge head, well my dad tried to hook the fish with no success. We got bummed for a second about missing the fish, and then my dad started to reel in, about halfway in his pole just loaded up like I've never seen it do before. We both thought he had got hung on something for a second, but then the fish started rolling and pulling drag! "Holy *Bad word*" my dad said, this fish was very big, we both could see that. It pulled a lot of drag and did a lot of rolling but the 10/0 Eagle Claw King Kahle hook was holding it good. After a 7-8 minute fight my dad had the fish beside the boat, I couldn't believe my eyes, this was the biggest fish we have caught in a long time, however we have hooked many as large and bigger that got off. I got it in the net, and grabbed the frame of the net to heave the fish in the boat. It started to thrash around very hard and almost throw my dads bait pole out of the boat. The first thing that was on our mind was getting a picture, and weighing the fish fast so we could release it.
First of all we weighed the fish, scale was bouncing around from the fish thrashing a lot but was staying around 40 pounds. I feel the fish was more like 45-50 pounds but could be wrong I guess. After that I got a few great pictures, including one of my dad releasing the awesome fish to fight another day. At first the fish would not swim off and it didn't look good, but then we remembered what the guide we went out with told us, you have to burp the fish if you get it from deep water. We did that and the fish immiadetely got better, my dad made sure it was ok, and the fish slowly swam down.
We are both pumped about this fish very much, we have had bad luck the past year or two for some reason.
I have 4 pictures to share with you, what do you all think.... 40 pounds or bigger??