08-24-2010, 08:51 PM
*Post your stories about your most memorable catfish battles!
I was fishing a spot by a river trail and had a hit on creek chub's severed head. A big hit. My rod crashed into the ground kind of hit. I picked the pole up, waited to see if I could feel the fish, and as soon as I felt the beast pull, I set the hook. I realized quickly that this was a larger fish than I was ready for. A cat in the Des Plaines river hardly pushes 5 lb, and I knew what a 5 lb forktail felt like. This was bigger. Much bigger.
Of course, it would still have been a small fry if we were to compare him to his brothers in the South. To put in perspective, a 5 lb. cat where I live is like a 20 lb. channel cat in Dixie. I fought this fish for a good 10 minutes before I realized I was drawing a crowd. Yuppies on bikes were speculating from the bridge as to what fish I had on my line. I heard the names of prettier fish mentioned, such as pike and bass until someone noticed my gear and accurately affirmed it to be a catfish.
So it's been 10 min. and my 5 lb. Shakespearse line and reel have been in backreel the whole time when out of the blue a canoer enters the fray. Missing the canoe landing, he goes over my line and miraculously the line survives. This is when things really get hairy.
I'm trying to make sure I don't get in the canoer's way while still trying to fight this "monster" (I really only estimate him to be between 8-15 pounds, but catfish rarely get that large here). I can't see where the line is going because the oar-jockey is in the way. I notice that he's got fishing gear, so I ask him to help net the thing while he's there (the guy had been bumbling around for 5 min. now).
He looks at the fish (I haven't seen more than a fin at this point, though it was enough to tell me that it wasn't a carp). Then he looks at me. Then he looks at his net and says "Sorry, it's too big". After another3 minutes, amateur oar enthusiast finally lands his canoe, which lets me finally locate the fish. He was swimming up river, towards me, but, more importantly, towards an underwater snag that had eaten 3 of my hooks.
I fight for two more minutes and I feel him stop. The line is still taught, and the dead weight on the hook's end feels like a rock. I'm impatient by this point and I begin to reel vigorously. I feel more resistance, but my irritation gets the best of me. I can see flashes of fin and whisker and now the fish is only five feet away. I should have stopped reeling. The cat gave one last tug and the line snapped loudly. The reel, unable to withstand being on backreel constantly was completely screwed. As a matter of fact, the clash ended up destroying the reel. Line was ibtricately knotted and comming out of the bottom of the reel. So in the end, I lost a catch and a reel. If anyone has a happier story, I'd like to hear it. It'd be nice to hear that someone is having a better time than me.
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I was fishing a spot by a river trail and had a hit on creek chub's severed head. A big hit. My rod crashed into the ground kind of hit. I picked the pole up, waited to see if I could feel the fish, and as soon as I felt the beast pull, I set the hook. I realized quickly that this was a larger fish than I was ready for. A cat in the Des Plaines river hardly pushes 5 lb, and I knew what a 5 lb forktail felt like. This was bigger. Much bigger.
Of course, it would still have been a small fry if we were to compare him to his brothers in the South. To put in perspective, a 5 lb. cat where I live is like a 20 lb. channel cat in Dixie. I fought this fish for a good 10 minutes before I realized I was drawing a crowd. Yuppies on bikes were speculating from the bridge as to what fish I had on my line. I heard the names of prettier fish mentioned, such as pike and bass until someone noticed my gear and accurately affirmed it to be a catfish.
So it's been 10 min. and my 5 lb. Shakespearse line and reel have been in backreel the whole time when out of the blue a canoer enters the fray. Missing the canoe landing, he goes over my line and miraculously the line survives. This is when things really get hairy.
I'm trying to make sure I don't get in the canoer's way while still trying to fight this "monster" (I really only estimate him to be between 8-15 pounds, but catfish rarely get that large here). I can't see where the line is going because the oar-jockey is in the way. I notice that he's got fishing gear, so I ask him to help net the thing while he's there (the guy had been bumbling around for 5 min. now).
He looks at the fish (I haven't seen more than a fin at this point, though it was enough to tell me that it wasn't a carp). Then he looks at me. Then he looks at his net and says "Sorry, it's too big". After another3 minutes, amateur oar enthusiast finally lands his canoe, which lets me finally locate the fish. He was swimming up river, towards me, but, more importantly, towards an underwater snag that had eaten 3 of my hooks.
I fight for two more minutes and I feel him stop. The line is still taught, and the dead weight on the hook's end feels like a rock. I'm impatient by this point and I begin to reel vigorously. I feel more resistance, but my irritation gets the best of me. I can see flashes of fin and whisker and now the fish is only five feet away. I should have stopped reeling. The cat gave one last tug and the line snapped loudly. The reel, unable to withstand being on backreel constantly was completely screwed. As a matter of fact, the clash ended up destroying the reel. Line was ibtricately knotted and comming out of the bottom of the reel. So in the end, I lost a catch and a reel. If anyone has a happier story, I'd like to hear it. It'd be nice to hear that someone is having a better time than me.
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