Big Channel Cats

After seeing a bud of mine catch some nice channels I decided to hit a pond in my Town Limits and see how it is.  Problem........I had no good bait.....except,  my box turtles night crawlers and some frozen catalpa worms......Heck,  I do have some good bait but  I was out of cutbait which I usually keep in my game freezer.
So off to the pond I went.....stayed a couple of hours.  Rods were a Abu 5600 C4 with 15 lb ande on a 7' rod and a Shimano 3500 Baitrunner on a short 6' ugly stik loaded with the same 15 lb ande.  These are what I call by "light" cat rods.

Had 3 hits but only one hookup which was this bad boy . A 13 lber!

Then a couple of days later I took my son and a freind of his Thomas.

This time I also had no cutbait but I had gone by Foodlion and picked up some White Bass fillets.  These I cut into strips and soaked in Garlic juice. 

Here is our first hit.

A 16 lb 4 oz monster

Thomas then caught a 9.5 lber 

 A good night fishing and the boys had a great time.....I will have to hit up a few more local ponds as most around here are loaded with Channels......Thanks Mack

Blackwater Creek Adventure

Went to a tributary of the Neuse river this am(6/7/11) in search of some Jack(Chain Pickeral).
Launched at 7am at a private ramp and made the paddle to this trib and worked my way up about 1 mile throwing a red roostertail with a silver blade. No Jack! but did manage 3 bass about 1 lb apiece and 2 bream.

Had to make 2 portages around fallen trees but not a bad float.

Since no Jack were caught on the way up I switched bait s and tied on a spinnerbait to throw on the way back down. Mainly targeted logs and cypress knees.  I picked up 3more bass all almost identical to the first 3 and 1 small bowfin.

Finally almost back down at the neuse I picked up a bass that may of went 5 lbs wet. She gave a good fight but 14 lb fireline was too much for her.

Dissapointed I didnt catch a Jack but a good morning it was with some decent fish caught.
Mack

Bowfin Slayer

Went to the Neuse Saturday June 4th in search of some Bream and Catfish.  My son wanted to take a freind so Nathan was our  fishing partner for today. We arrived at the ramp at aprox 3pm and made way to our bream hole.

Nathan and Mack caught lots of Bream on crickets with a few good ones caught. Not nearly as many big ones as last time but we were fishing for bait so smaller ones are ok as the bigger bream were released.

I had told Mack that the cat bite may be slow this evening as the cats are spawning so he decided that he wanted to fish for Bowfin while we were Bream fishing. I put out 1 rod (shimano 3500 Baitrunner w/15lb line on a 6 ft ugly stik) for Bowfin using cutbait on the bottom. You can see this rig on my post about catching catfish out of canoes. This rig with cutbait is a proven catcher of Bowfin.

Here is a video of the first Bowfin of the day

He caught 2 that size. Here is a picture of his other big one. Hard fighters!

After dark we set up on 3 different catfish spots but no hookups.  We all had a blast as we saw lots of wildlife and even had a fawn swim by us. We packed up and headed home at 11:30pm.