Neuse River Cats, Shellcrackers and Shooting stars

Made a trip to the Neuse Aug 14,15 with my son and his Friend Tyler for some catfishing on the Neuse River. We launched at a private ramp on the Neuse at aprox 4pm sat and fished until Sunday 4:30 am.

Here is a video of our journey down one creek at about 1/4 throttle.

  The first part of the day was spent fishing for bait. We caught a lot of bream and some very nice shellcrackers on crickets fishing around wood structure , namely cypress trees and blowdowns.
Most were avg size to small which is good in a way as I don't really like to use big bream for bait as they do attract flatheads better but I don't like wasting a a big ole bream. here is a nice shellcracker that my son caught. This shellcracker was released along with all the very nice sized ones we caught. The water temperature in 2 creeks that we fished was a toasty 92 degrees, while the main river was 88 degrees.

Right before dark we started catfishin .  The action was decent dark -12midnight and then it picked up again aprox 2-4.  Here is Tylers first Flathead.

 Here is my sons first of the night at aprox 22lbs

Above is a gar I caught and a 24 lb flattie.

Here is the best cat of the night caught by my son at 34 lbs. Caught on a live bream hooked to a 9/0 hook on 8 inches of leader and held down with a 2 ox weight. You do not want a long leader as they will wrap you around something if you do.

Was a great night. We saw over 20 shooting stars as there is a meteor shower going on this week and heard a lot of owls. Mack