After we picked up bait Russ, Amanda, and I ran through the shuttle routine.....drop Russ' car off at the take out, load up his gear onto the trailer, drive over to the launch location, etc... By 3:30pm we were on the water and looking for buffalo. If you read the last blog you may already know that buffalo fishing has become one of our favorite daytime activities on the river. Flathead catfish rarely bite during daylight hours so we find it more productive to search out buffalo feeding on floating scum mats. (Note the different colored text.....keep this in mind!)
We paddled around for the first 15 minutes and quickly realized that the buffalo weren't feeding. The river was receding from a large rain event and was still a foot high and a slightly stained. Since the buffalo weren't feeding we decided to anchor up on a couple of the deeper holes in the river and try our luck. This was also a way to use up some of the bluegill that had died over night. Before we went our separate ways and anchored on our own spots I had to give Amanda a few of the dead bluegill, which I had stored in a five gallon bucket in the back of my kayak. As I reached back and grabbed the bucket I heard something hit the water.....after further inspection I noticed a white hawg trough (standard measuring board) sinking like a stone in the current. This trip was quickly becoming quite costly.
Once again I shook it off. I anchored up on the head of a hole and began tossing pieces of cut bluegill out along current breaks. Ten minutes later one of my bait clickers began going off. I grabbed the rod and swung for the fences....and connected. The fish stayed low and began working its way into the swifter water near the middle of the river. It never took line but it felt heavy. After a two minute tug of war competition I realized that it wasn't a fish at all, rather a giant leatherback turtle. This trip was not turning out how I had imagined it.
After an hour and only a turtle to show for our efforts we decided to head down stream to the next deep hole. Once again I decided to take the head of the hole. I quickly tied myself off to a tree that was sticking out of the water. Russ paddled downstream to the core of the hole and positioned himself on the bank near the calmer deep water. Amanda found a school of feeding buffalo so she began drifting chunks of night crawler to them. Less than five minutes later my bait clicker started going off. I set the hook and connected once again, and then I quickly realized a problem with my choice of location. The current where I had chosen to anchor was pretty swift, which made for landing/fighting even the smallest fish a difficult task. After a 3 minute battle, which should have taken 30 seconds, I landed my first fish of the trip.
I quickly snapped a few pictures for kayakwar points and tossed my rod back out. A few minutes later I hear Russ yell that he's got one. I couldn't make out everything he said because the current was making sounds as it rushed past my bait bucket, transducer arm, and kayak. Amanda was located in between Russ and I and she caught the whole comment. She looked over to me and said, "He said he had a GOOD one!" I yelled down to him that I was on my way. I quickly began reeling in rods and unwrapped my anchor.
As I rounded the bend I saw Russ with his rod doubled, tip nearly hitting the water, and kayak scooting toward the middle of the river. I paddled up within 15 feet of him and began getting the net ready. He then proceeded to tell me that he couldn't do anything with the fish. It was on bottom and it wouldn't come up for anything. I watched his drag slip a few times as he lifted the rod and applied pressure. He had 40lb monofilament on his rod and from what I could tell he could still afford to crank the drag down tighter. He really had no choice at this point, the river bottom was littered with trees and it was only a matter of time before the flathead found one and wrapped him up. With a couple cranks of the drag Russ was able to make some progress and pull the fish free from the bottom. Now this is where things began to get interesting. We were both drifting down a river, he being propelled by a fish and current and myself being propelled by current. It took less than thirty seconds for the flathead to pull Russ within an arms distance of my kayak. I quickly began to back paddle but it only seemed to make things worse. At one point Russ was actually fighting the fish around my kayak. Eventually, the fish made his way back around Russ' kayak and we were able to push off of each other. The fish then began boiling the water at the surface each time it made a run. We could tell that this was a long fish, the point at which the line went into the water was a good 40" or more from the boils that the fish was putting off with its tail. Eventually, Russ got the catfish to surface within an arms reach. It was a pig and he wasn't waiting for me to come over with the net. He quickly leaned over and grabbed the fishes lower jaw. At that point I paddled over and got the net under the rest of the fish. Now we had to get to the bank to get pictures and get a weight. Russ reeled in his other rod and gave me the net. (my kayak is deeper so I could securely hold the fish and paddle over to the bank.) We paddled over to the bank and began snapping pictures.
At 11pm Russ and Amanda were ready to head downstream and give another spot a shot. We each went our own way and dropped anchor. This spot was no different than the last. Lots of bites near the bank, and a lot of missed hooksets. The fish were either too small to get the whole bait in their mouth or very smart. Amanda ended up landing a nice channel in the 25-28" range thirty minutes after setting up anchor, however she was after bigger fish and decided not to take a picture with it. After a couple hours in this spot everyone was ready to move on and find more active fish. At this point I was on my last piece of bait so I had to bum bait off of Amanda and Russ, who seemed to be having a slow night judging by the amount of bait they had left.
We found another spot nearly a half mile down stream and began tying off to limbs and anchoring on the bank. Russ took the head of the log jam, Amanda the core, and I took the end of the log jam. I found a nice spot with a clean bank about 20 yards upstream from a log jam and overhanging tree. I buried my anchor in the sand on the bank and began tossing out my rods. Within ten minutes the rod that I had placed closest to the bank began to get a bite. I grabbed the rod, dropped the rod tip, engaged the reel, waited for the fish to take up the slack, and set the hook. The drag immediately began to slip as the fish made a hard run. This was a strong fish. About 45 seconds into the fight the fish found a piece of wood. I wasn't wrapped up too bad yet because I could still feel him swimming around. There just seemed to be a point where I couldn't get him over a log or something, so I pulled anchor and went out to fight him from the other side. A couple minutes and several strong runs later I landed what I believed to be my first 20lb flathead from this river. (Russ and I joke all the time that the river doesn't hold fish in the 20-30lb class. We have caught dozens of flathead with a few over 30lbs and yet to get one in the 20-30 lb range.) I yelled up to him and told him that I had a "20", eager to see this mysterious creature he paddled down to investigate. He immediately said, "Nope......not quite 20. Maybe 18." Onto the scale she went...........and Russ was right, not quite 20lbs.
At 4am we decided to call it quits and make the paddle back. All in all we had a pretty good trip. Everyone caught a flathead, Amanda even got a nice channel cat, Russ caught a pig at 35lbs 3oz, and we all had a pretty good time. Maybe it will be Amanda's turn for a giant next time!
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