After two great days/nights of cat fishing up stream of Everts Resort, I woke up to my truck being taped off with “crime scene” tape. Apparently someone got the word the channel cat fishing is criminal again!
Friday evening I found myself meeting up with Jesse Krook and Tim Miller at the Bluffs for dinner. I figured one of the two of them would buy me dinner, but it wasn’t in the cards that night. I hoped fishing would be better. Off to the river.
Jesse and I made it to our first location about 8 pm.
Using the quality products from Team Catfish, it was easy to get the tussling channels to start biting.
It’s always a good time fishing with the Krook! He’s so inspiring to me.
I did draw the line when he handed me the fourth Team Catfish Floating Fish Grip though.
Seldom do we get back to the resort this early and we saw the campfires flickering on the way back to the dock. Jesse headed for home and I headed for the up stream campfire to see what was going on there. Brett King and his FW Elaine were enjoying the flickering warmth of Master Campfire Builder Kerry Harvey’s fire.
While I was teaching Brett all I know about walleye fishing…
Kerry dosed off.
Saturday evening was much more serious. Colbey and Dustin came up from MO to do some fishing. They did some bank fishing earlier in the day on Pool 2 then met up with me at 7pm.
The bite started off with quality size sheephead coming to the boat…if there is such a thing. Then around 8 pm it was constant action for around two hours. Never knew if it was going to be a sheepie or a channel until the fight started and could feel the fish on the I-Cat rods.
We had a number in the double digits, with the largest coming in later at 13 pounds. Very few smaller size channels tonight with the littlest guy coming in at just over 4 on the digital.
Between the rod bending action of the sheepies and the channels, we lost count of fish caught. I feel comfortable is saying it was in the twenty’s for the cats.
Around Midnight the bite slowed some and I thought the NW wind had died a bit so we made a move. Anchoring down stream some, we found the wind was still just too much. We could have tossed out another anchor, but none of use were totally acclimated to the drop in temps. We figured we would giver 10 minutes and move back to our original location that was out of the winds cold chill.
This time of year, it’s always a good idea to have at least one rod out with cut bait on it. The river being the river we never know what is going to pick up the bait.
In this case the rod directly in front of me started to bend over. Because we’re using the Team Catfish 3/0 Double Action hooks we don’t have to “set” the hook, just lift and take out the slack.
Well, I normally pick up this rod and hand it to the person behind me with one hand. This time the rod stopped before I could get it to Colbey and he needed to reach over me to get the rod!
Colbey had a good fight. This guy just didn’t want anything to do with our boat. It wasn’t coming up for nothing and I heard Colbey saying “come ON!” a number of times. I think he was getting tired. LOL!
Thirty five pounds of flathead did make it to the boat and it was knuckles all the way around.
Everts Pool 4 Personal Best Pins were awarded to both anglers at the end of the night.
Without the wind gusting to over 15 mph, it would have been a very comfortable night fishing. The clearing skys and the sliver of a moon coming up around 11 pm was pretty darn cool looking. The fish cooperating sure did make for a awesome night on the Ol’ Mississippi River!