JUST ENOUGH…
NEUSE RIVER REPORT 09-23-09
If we know nothing else about catfish we know that when the river is on the rise, the cats eat. And that’s a fact. That is why wed morning after Tuesday’s night’s rain, we were on the phones with our wives telling them we would not be home for dinner.
So after work, I loaded up my new home made bream holding/transport tank and headed to the lake to catch some bait.
Bait was easy and in just an hour or so I had 40 nice sized bream. Those bream coupled with 5 eels I bought earlier in the week form Corey, at Castaway Fishing supply Co. should be enough to last a couple hours.
We got to the river and it had crested and started to fall. But, we had just enough rain that we could get up river to a few of our favorite spots.
We headed up river and went as far as the bridge. We have caught 20’s -30’s from that spot in the past so we were confident about the spot.
It didn’t take long; Jimmy hooked up first, on a bream on the deep side of the river. It was a flathead that weighed 24lbs.
I was next; I landed an 8lb. flathead on bream.
The next hook up would set the tone for the rest of the night; as the rod loaded up it stopped and just started to bounce, he was hooked but in a snag. The fish were feeding right on the river banks and to catch them you had to throw your baits into the blow downs and hang ups on the banks, so that’s what we did. This is a very dangerous thing to do and could cost allot of money in terminal tackle, could lead possible to breaking a rod or tipping over the boat when you try to get the fish out of the snag. But we were willing to take the risk. I knew my 65 suffix braided line would not let me down so Jimmy pulled in all his rods and we headed toward the bank to see if we could land him….after about 5 minutes of trying different directions he popped out of the snag and we were able to land the first flathead citation of the year…32 lbs. on cut eel.
We caught three fish off the same spot and probably could have stayed there all night catching them but we had to work the next morning so we headed down river.
Next spot, next fish was a 10 pound flathead on eel.
We continued moving down river catching cats on every spot.
After a brief tussle with a grass carp that thought he was a flathead (it tried to eat a small bream)
I was landing the next flathead. Another citation!!! 33 pound flathead again on eel.
Jimmy landed the next couple flatheads (in the teens) one on eel and one on bream.
The next spot would prove why it sucks to fish the bank edges and blow downs. As we were setting up we heard a fish feeding not more than 10’away from us. So I pitched a bream toward the direction of the fish. I kept the line tight so if something hit it and tried to run into the snags it wouldn’t be able to…WRONG!!! 2 minutes later my rod was slammed in the rod holder!! I picked up to reel but the damage was done.
He was in a snag a BIG snag!! So because we just started fishing that spot I suggested we just fish the spot and then when we were ready to leave we would see if we could land him.
Well as it went we did not land him. I kept pulling and eventually broke my 50 pound mono leader at the hook so not sure what the results where but I think there is a flathead swimming in the Neuse with a 7/0 gammi circle hook in his mouth.
The next fish would do the exact same thing. 5 minutes after setting up on what would be our last spot. My rod started to thump, I took it out of the rod holder and told Jimmy you aint going to believe this…he is in a snag, but this fish was different, despite the snag he was still pulling line…”Jimmy asked what do you want to do? ” about that time the fish made a hard run and turned the boat sideways while peeling out even more line, I didn’t even have to answer he said “we are going to get that fish, its huge!”
After what seemed about 5-10 minutes of frustration trying to free the snag…finally it popped but I thought it was snagged a second time until the fish made a hard run to the center of the river and that’s when I realized it was not snagged that weight was all him.
Once we got him to the center of the river we both breathed a sigh of relief and now knew that we would land this fish.
It was one of the hardest fish I have ever had to fight and every time we thought it was over he would take another 10-15 yards of line.
Finally Jimmy reached down into his mouth and landed me new P.B flathead. 40. Pounds. I may have hooked the fish but it would not have been possible to fight or land him without Jimmy’s help.
THANKS MAN!!!
Click on link for video
