55 Pound Watts Bar Flathead

I took Christian Allen and his girlfriend Stephanie catfishing tonight on Watts Bar. We met up about 5:30 p.m. after I had gotten a bunch of really good gizzard shad (~8") for bait. I don't believe Stephanie had ever been fishing before, so I was very hopeful we would be able to catch a few and maybe even a good sized one. We started by running up to the upper end of Long Island fishing in ~15 - 20' of water where it drops off from the island flat. We got a big goose egg there so we went over to the point @ the Round Island Daymark 572.8. I picked up the first blue cat (Ictalurus furcatus) of the evening - he weighed right at 12 lbs. We left this spot pretty quickly because we weren't getting many bites, so we ran down river to the bluff @ 569.4 but there were some kids swimming where I wanted to fish so we moved on down below the confluence of the Clinch and the Tennessee Rivers to the mouth of my old cove where the creek drops into the main channel. It's about 25' deep at this point, and we anchored up and put our three rods out. Just within a few minutes we started catching a few blues and flatheads - all around the 10 to 15 lb range. Stephanie had a couple of nice fish on but lost them before we could get them in, so the action was definitely keeping us on our toes. Then at about 8:30 p.m. Mr. Big slurped down a big ole gizzard, and after about 5 minutes of battling with the Ambassadeur 6000 on a Berkley flippin' stick and 50 lb test Ande monofilament, he was aboard the G3, a 44" 55 lb Flathead Cat (Pylodictis olivaris).
A little bit later Christian caught a 21 lb. blue cat to finish of a strong evening of cattin'. I say this won't be a evening Stephanie forgets anytime soon, I sure know I won't. Wow! Thank you Lord Jesus for your awesome creativity when you created big ole' cats.
Overall, we boated 10 cats - with the best one being 55 lbs.

Catfishin' Watts Bar

Crystal and I went catfishing at the upper end of Long Island – she caught an 8 lb blue cat. We fished for about an hour at this location and then moved down to 50 lb point at Bell Cove – got a couple of bites but no fish. While we were up at Long Island we saw Scott and his boys fishing for white bass, and wouldn't you know it Ian finessed out a nice 3 lb smallmouth. He and Ethan are really turning into good fishermen.

Doubling Up on Personal Bests & Big Flatheads

Crystal, Arnold, Nancy, and I went fishing on Watts Bar (upper most end of Long Island) tonight.  I got our bait (gizzard shad) in Center Farm cove.  All of the bait was large (7 -10”).  We fished from ~6:30 to 9:00 p.m. and caught several rockfish, channel catfish, blue catfish, and flathead catfish.  Crystal and Nancy both caught the biggest fish of their lives – Crystal a 9 lb blue cat and Nancy a 15 lb rockfish.

I also caught a really nice 45 lb flathead catfish.  My Boga Grip only goes up to 30 lbs and the flathead pegged it out instantly, so I measured it at 46” and I estimated it weighed between 40 & 45 lbs.  I looked up on the Missouri Department of Conservation website a catfish length vs. weight estimator (http://mdc.mo.gov/fish/sport/catfish/length_weight.htm) and it says a 46” flathead weighs 45.59 lbs. Sweet!

Flathead Fishin’

I fished Ft. Loudoun Lake today at the Little River; I got plenty of good sized gizzard shad and fished in the Little River and all the way up the Tennessee to Sequoyah Hills – 0 fish – I basically fished all day and got completely blanked. So…I loaded up and relaunched blow Ft. Loudoun Dam to catfish the Tennessee. I fished until about 2:30 a.m. and caught one flathead that weighed 25 lbs, it measured 39". Great picture huh?