Neuse River Camping for Catfish

I decided to take my son camping on the Neuse last weekend(April 28,29). Tom (turtlestewbro) called me at the last minute and I asked him if he also wanted to go. He was in.  We arrived at the ramp at aprox 2pm Saturday.

This spot is like an old friend.  I have fished this area since the early 90's and sometimes wonder how I could of done without this place. It is always interesting and exciting when I get on the water here.  What has changed from last year and what has stayed the same??? A couple of big trees had fallen since my last time here and one area had been logged  but it was still the same ole great fishing spot.    My boat would be my  trusty Coleman Scanoe with my Mercury 2.5 for power. Tom would be solo in his yak. First order of the day would be to get bait for catfishing this evening. That meant fishing for bream with crickets. Usually that is a pretty easy thing to do here. You cast the cricket near a cypress tree, it sits there a minute, your bobber goes under, you reel in a bream. Easy.  No, not today! The Bream fishing today was one of the worst days I have had here fishing for them.  My son did score a nice one right off the bat but it took us several hours to get 5 Bream in the boat. That meant most of them would be used as cut bait as each one cut up would be 3-4 pieces of bait with of course the head being the best. 

A lot of top water action was going on as we were fishing for bream. I couldn't tell if it was small bass eating minnows, crappie or whatever  but you would see the small fry jump and scatter followed  by a big splash. I threw my spinnerbait to no avail and finally i downsized to a  1/16 oz white jig with a pink head . Almost immediately I was rewarded with this fish.

Stripers!.....Nice, and fun on 6lb line but they were no where near the minimum size limit of 18 inches so I had to return to bream fishing. 

We took 3 catfish outfits for this trip.  1. Ambassadeur 7000 loaded with 40 lb cajun line on a 7.5 ft American Spirit Nite Stik,  2. Ambassaduer 6500 w/power handle loaded with 30lb big game line on a 7' white Ugly Stik, and  3. Shimano Bantam 50 loaded with 25 lb Ande on a 7' Black Ugly Stik. This River is not the place to bring "wimpy outfits" . Just before sunset we sat up on one of our favorite spots and my son caught this one right at dark. It hit a small live bream, the only one we used live and this flathead was also the smallest we have ever caught here. Maybe 3 lbs at the most.

20 minutes later this Flathead hit a  bream head sprayed with garlic.

Not a monster but she put up a nice battle.

A little while later Tom hooked up to  a monster of a fish and fought it for about 10 minutes but finally the hook pulled out. Dang!   I am sure Tom will be back trying to catch that fish and redeem himself. We quit fishing at about 12 midnight , headed back to camp, set up the tent and I grilled porkchops. We then ate and crashed for the night. Not a lot of fish caught but fun as usual.  I can't wait to get back and fish here again.  Mack