Oldfeller--FSO
Serious Thumper ModSquad
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Hobby is now "concentrated neuropany"
Posts: 12638
Fayetteville, NC
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Now let me tell you about BIG catfish and ultra lite rods.
I spent 2-3 hours learning how to catch one of Dave's catfish. First, they will not touch an artificial anything (but the brim and the bass will). Second, they will not eat live bait, especially anything that is moving around. Third, they will not hit meat (but the brass and the brim will).
They will consistently hit a small to medium chunk of floating bread, but only after circling it twice to check it out good.
Line size is everything as they circle the bait, 8-10 pound nylon line gets detected about half the time and the fish leaves. If one fish slaps his tail in the water all the fish in the area run for deeper water .... but you get another chance shortly as the endless rotation goes by.
What is needed is Spyder Silkpatented line, line with a high breaking strength (10 pounds) but the size of 4 pound test nylon line. Beware of imitators, Spider Wire is slightly different stuff and it seems to be more widely available --- who knows, it might be better.
When you are casting nothing for weight (a hook and a piece of bread) a free casting ultra-lite is just the ticket.
Dave's fish circle the side of his pond about 4- 8 feet out from the shore running in line with each other going counter clockwise. Spacing between fish is about 3-5 feet and by doing this they can scent the whole pond continuously.
This helps, as a bungled cast or other noisy operator error will see a new crop of customers in about 5-10 minutes as the fish rotate around the pond. You cast, make a splash, scare off the nearby fish then you wait for the new customers to rotate around the pond. If your bait is 5-10 feet out that's golden -- jest wait for it. Catfish hunt by scent, but Dave's fish are right picky as to what they will eat.
Casting at visible fish is a waste of time, it scares them off 100%. These fish hunt by smell alone, so your bait has to sit and trail odor off into the water. They like them blueberry English muffins they do ..... even better than plain bread.
You sit there with an open bail, waiting for a big cat to take the bread floating on the top of the water. You can see the big dark shadow as the catfish circles twice checking for line (spyder silk is neutral buoyancy and stays right under the surface) then he turns and runs straight at it and swallows it whole. No joke, a couple of them came straight on to me and I could see straight down their gullets when they took the bait.
One of the ones we caught had a 8-10" mouth on him, seriously.
The line then rolls off the bail as the fish continues his endless counter clockwise circle while he swallows his dinner. Give them at least a count of 10 to swallow the bait. I learned not to strike the hook so hard as I was breaking the line off at the nook at first but instead I just start with a light tug and begin retrieving line. The hook biting into his guts makes the fish take off like a freight train and the drag buzzes as the line goes out. The fish actually finishes seating the hook all by himself .....
The the fight is generally 10-15 minutes long and the catfish's guts aren't nearly strong enough to hold the hook at that level of stress, so the hook rips on up his innards and generally winds up caught in the very corner of his mouth, lodged in the gristle joint. All the damage done to the inside of the fish's guts helps shorten the fight time, which is a good thing, I guess.
It takes two of us to bring the catfish in and net him. You have to lay the net on the bottom and cajole the fish over the net, then raise it up and fold him in half to get him into the net. My net's rim opening wasn't big enough and if I planned to do this often by myself I'd get a larger diameter long handled salt water style net.
Dave's catfish roll when they get desperate right up at the shore and the sight of a 13-18 pound catfish rolling reminds you of an alligator rolling. Rolling means they can't fight effectively or veer off, so it is a straight pull towards the net at that point.
We threw away 35 pounds of stripped carcasses, a catfish is mostly head and ribcage and guts. Killing a catfish is hard, driving a knife through their head won't stop them from wriggling, nor will repeated blows from a hammer. Gripping them by the eye sockets and the tail fin and firmly holding them works, but it takes two people to fillet a wriggling 13-18 pound catfish one to hold the knife and fillet, and one to hold down the wriggling catfish.
The fillet meat was flawless however, no dark mudstripe at all on these fish. Overnight in a brine solution yielded wonderful non-fishy fish fillets that MM cut into long strips so they would fry up evenly.
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