My brother Ray and I read an article in the Baker newspaper last week about a guy catching a 35 pound Flathead Catfish in the Snake River just down from Huntington, Oregon where the Burnt River dumps into the Snake.
So we got fired up to go catfishing. We took off around 10:00 P.M. Sunday night and went to one of our favorite fishing spots. It was calm out and the river was like glass. We got to our spot and built a fire from the driftwood laying around and got everything ready to go and finally got our baits in the water about 15 minutes after we arrived. You could feel the anticipation in the air as we readied for a battle with a monster catfish.
It was about 15 minutes later, as I was pouring my first cup of coffee from my thermos that I had filled at home, that Ray said "There goes your rod." I glanced over at my old faithful 12 foot rod that I had built about 25 years ago for catfishing, and sure enough the corkie on my line had made it up to the first guide, and the spool appeared to still be turning telling me that the fish was slowly making off with my bait.
I took a sip of my coffee and set the cup down in the sand and went back to watching my reel. It had stopped, like had happened so many times in the past, but I told myself "He knows where it's at now, and he'll be back for more". For about the next 5 minutes an occassional 12 to 14 inches of line would pay out and then stop. I finally picked up the rod and told Ray "Next time it moves, I'm letting him have it."
After about another minute or two, I could sense a slight pressure on my line. I said "There he is" and let him have it. I really slammed the pressure to him and set that hook clear out the back of his head I thought. But it came up solid and didn't move. Dangit I thought. Hung up. I reeled down and came up slowly to see if I could dislodge the sinker from whatever it was hung up on. Nothing. Then I looked down at my reel and line was paying out. I looked at Ray and said "Buddy, I think I'm in trouble." He said "What's the problem?" I said "I'm not hung, I have the fish or I should say he has me. And I've only got 17# test line on here and I can't begin to slow him down." By now of course the fish knows he's in trouble too and starts to make for parts unknown. After about 10 minutes I got him to slow down and started to gain on him a little bit. Another 10 minutes later and the need for a new set of muscles everywhere, I had him laying on the beach. It was a 21 pound, 6 ounce Channel Cat. And here are some pictures of him.
That was a pretty darned good story, don't you think? Well not a damned word of it is true. We were sitting there fishing just like I said in the story, but the wind blew this guy right up on the shore in front of us. He was dead already. Don't know how he died? Old age maybe. We couldn't see anything on him that would indicate any kind of injury he might have suffered. So we don't know what happened to him. He did in fact weigh 21 pounds 6 ounces though. And we never caught a single fish there all night long. After daylight, we moved to another spot we fish a lot and caught about 10 or 12 Channels, and here are the pictures of a couple of them.
Jim
Oh, the part in the story about the guy catching the 35 lb. Flathead? That was true. It was in the paper here a few days ago.
Subject: My Monster Channel Catfish 
Wed May 28, 2008 4:28 am
