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Actually I’ve taken channel cats up to about 3 pounds on a fly. While living in southern Michigan, trout were a scarcity and I spent a lot of time chasing carp and catfish on a fly. My best luck for channel cats was fishing a black wooly bugger or a black bunny leech, in smaller sizes, on a floating line, and fishing it very slow, bouncing it off the bottom.
That being said, I used to live in Virginia, and once I was fishing a backwater slough near my house when I saw catfish rising for the first time. They were rolling on the surface, and I managed to catch a smaller one, around a pound and a half, on a size 12 adams.
One day while rock climbing on the upper Potomac River in Maryland, I finished a nice climb and was surveying the river from the top of this cliff. Looking down in the shallow water, about a foot deep, I saw about ten catfish feeding in the current, with puffs of mud coming off behind them, just like mudding carp. I came back the next day and the fish were gone…
I’ve been catfishing with bait since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and later in the summer I know a spot on the Potomac in Virginia where the large catfish come into the shallows during August. The average size catfish there is around 15 pounds, the largest we’ve caught weight in at 38 pounds, but that was all on gear. Still, your fishing in 5 feet of water, and I’ve been thinking about trying to find a cheap ticket back to the East Coast to go chase them, although most of August I’ll be in Southeast Alaska.
For some reason people seem to think that catfish are exclusively bottom feeders, and I don’t know where that comes from. The world record flathead catfish was taken on a jig, and one day I witnessed a guy catch a 50 pound + flathead on a live 6 inch blue gill. It took three of us to lift it to get a photo, and the guy said he catches them like that all the time. On a further note, I used to spin fish for bass every weekend while I was growing up, and I’ve caught catfish on everything from rapalas to spinner baits.
Next time you’re on the east coast and you feel the need for catfish, grab a 10 weight and head over to Santee Cooper reservoir in South Carolina. They regularly catch 50 pound plus catfish out of there, and you can rent john boats for pretty cheap…
Ryan Davey MSN GSC
Calling Fly Fishing a hobby is like calling Brain Surgery a job. - Paul Schullery -----Original Message-----
Can't be any harder than carp! I just gotta get over my aversion to the South and move down there for a couple of years. Do they make a stinkbait fly???
S
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- Re: Big fish on small rods (was Re: Recommended Blank/Kit for 2... Sean Grier
- Ryan Davey
