Flatheads of the Minnesota River 8/14/06

The flathead catfishing has been nothing short of hot this year on the Minnesota River. Numbers of 30, 40 and even 50 pound fish have been reported being caught and released by the members of our IDA cat fishing community since early this year.

Here’s IDA member Larry Flatcaster with the largest Flathead of the evening!

As most of my fishing outings have started, this one was no different. Expert trophy cat fisherman (and first place winner of IDA’s AND Moore’s Bait and Tackle cat fishing contests, Larry Flatcaster and I were Private Messaging each other and finally worked out last night as a time to fish together. We met at a McDonald’s parking lot and after a quick dinner, headed for the Minnesota River.

Larry motored us to the first hole and lobbed out a frozen shad that he bought from >Bob Moore’s Bait and Tackle in MPLS< as he was looking for the early evening channel cat bite. Using a circle hook, he had a number of taps and short runs through the evening hours, but just couldn’t connect with them. As an after thought, I was thinking that because the shad are so soft and oily, that a person might have to run the hook through them twice.. I think the channels were grabbing the hook free area of the bait and just pulling it off the hook, because after each bite, Larry’s hook was cleaned off.

As darkness approached on the Minnesota, Larry changed over to a creek chub. He said that they’ve been doing well this them. I just change to a new, friskier bullhead. Larry went to check the tautness of the anchor rope and just as he picked up the rope, his rod made the unmistakable “jump” of a flat inhaling the chub…and the fight was on! Larry had this fish under the boat and under the anchor rope…it was a sight to see and the flat tried every trick in the book to elude the Flatcaster. Larry’s been there before and done that, he handed the rod from one hand to the other, under the anchor rope. If there would have been music playing, I would have said he practice this dance before!

Length, pictures and weight and this big guy was back in the water to give someone else the pleasure of the fight another day.

We moved closer to the wooded area that we were fishing, There were a number of splashes along the shore line that both Larry and I speculated were flats feeding shallow. I decided that it was time for me to switch to a chub and made a cast toward the bank. A loud thud was heard as I over cast in the darkness and my sinker and chub hit the bank. Sometimes it’s better to over cast at night and then pull the bait back to the water when you really want to get close to shore.

It wasn’t too long and I watched the #2 Boss rod have the strangest hit I’ve ever seen. Just a sidebar note here, I picked up this cat specific rod from Moor’s Bait and Tackle in Mpls. It’s turned out to be a relatively inexpensive rod that’s top of the line for an “off the shelf rod”. I would recommend anyone in the market for a new rod. Normally the tip of the rod will bend when there’s a light strike. Not this time, the whole rod was moving up and down. I’ve seen this “bite” many times before…a sure sign of a turtle. I was asking Larry if he was going to bring the turtle into the boat as I prefer…not too. It was decided that we…er he would tackle the turtle boat side as I picked up the rod and gingerly set the hook all the while hoping the hook would be free of the reptile. No luck! But the odd thing was that it wasn’t coming in like a turtle…the darn thing was fighting and taking out drag on the cinched down Garcia 7000!

Here’s a photo of my latest turtle…isn’t she a beauty!?

It was getting close to quitting time…but Larry said “We’re having a good night Brian, lets stay a bit longer”. I take orders from the captain well. Baited up with another chub and went back to BSing with Larry.

The next fish had more of a regular bite and he too came from 4 to 5 fow right next to shore. This guy pictured here was a “different” fish in a couple ways. First off his lower jaw was completely broken through. Although I ‘spose things like this happen in nature, I suspect it was a stringered fish that “busted” off and got away. It had healed well. The other odd thing was his whiskeres on one side. There were two of them that “y”ed out. I’ve never seen this before. Hopefully you’ll be able to see this in the photo.

All in all, we had great conversation and some very, very nice fish in the boat as an added bonus. Thanks for the guided trip Larry, I owe you one!

We had some fun with the video camera and Larry will be posting linkes to them shortly. Larry kept track of the weights and length of the fish this night and will report them too.

‘till next time…FISH ON!!