A young man, a scanoe and one Bad@$$ River. May 2010

My son wanted to go catch some fish on one of his last days during track out from school. I said where do you want to go?. He replied that he wanted to go to the neuse since that's the only place we catch fish. Ouch!..

So the Neuse River it was. we started the day with this little guy

A nice little yellow bellied slider


We then saw the biggest snapping turtle that I have ever seen but i could not get the camera out in time.

We then started catching bream, some up to 12 ozs but no big bull bream. All bream today caught on crickets aprox 1.5 ft under bobbers.

here's the avg bream we caught today


After bream fishing we then started out trying for some cats. We had some good hits but hooked only 2. Mine was a nice 7 lb blue that my son netted. This blue was caught on a flat that has been productive for me in the past. The bait was cut bream on a 4/0 hook. The reel is a 6500 Ambassadeur loaded with 30 lb line stuck on a white uglystik rod. This blue actually jumped out of the water when i set the hook. I have never seen a cat do that before!


Here is my son getting ready to crosseye a cat or a bait stealing gar!



Right at dark we left the flat and went to a "hole" which also has produced for me in the past. I told my son that we had to leave by 9:30 as we had a 2.5 hr ride home and I had to be at work early the next day. Right about when we were getting ready to leave, he popped up off his seat and set the hook and the fight was on! I did not even see the rod go down. After a short but awesome battle which almost ended up with my son in the river , he got this 22 lb flattie canoe side and I returned the favor by netting his fish. This was his PB flattie by 1 lb . (his biggest cat to date is a 30lb blue). This fish was caught on a live bream on a Carolina rig anchored by a 2 oz weight. The reel is a shimano 6500 bait runner with 25 lb test golden stren. This rig is easier for a 13 year old to cast than a baitcaster, and has plenty of power matched with a 7 ft tiger rod.


It was a great day on the water. Lots of owls heard and 1 bald eagle seen. We also saw 1 muskrat and 1 beaver . We usually see a few fox squirrels in one spot but they did not show their selves today. Mack