Heeeere Kitty, Kitty

You’re probably thinking, “What the hell was that title?” Well don’t worry, I told you I had a surprise planned in my previous blog and I’ve come to deliver the goods (after several weeks of failing miserably). That’s right, I caught a catfish! But in order to do so, I had to cross to the Dark Side…

And by “Dark Side” I mean fish with bait instead of just lures. I’ve mostly used lures because bait is a bit more of a hassle, can be a bit gross, and I’m super lazy. But catfish aren’t stupid and if you don’t give them something worthwhile they aren’t biting some floating chunk of plastic (a bit of an exaggeration but they are much harder to catch with lures). If you do, they just sit back and give you a look like this:

So instead, I started trying to catch bait fish. Now “baitfish” is a fairly broad term, just think little sunfish and anything smaller. Point being, you want catch a fish that other fish eat. I figured this wouldn’t be too much of a challenge – catching little guys in MA was never much of a problem. Well… its not quite as easy out here in NY, given every body of water is a massive and swift river. I tried to hit up several small creeks at first but no luck.

A small aside, I should note that if you want to try and catch fish to use as bait, don’t ever catch a fish and then use it as bait in a different body of water. This can spread diseases that exist in one place to a place that they don’t – also, it is very much illegal to do so in most states.

Eventually I said screw it and just googled things that catfish will bite at. Turns out, catfish will eat just about any organic matter (so will Bubz). So I decided to go to the local grocery store and pick up a couple hot dogs (I ate the other six). The basic set up is put some bait on a hook, put a weight on the line so it stays put, and find a forked stick. Final product should look like this:

Well my first foray didn’t quite work – turns out hot dogs don’t stay on hooks when you attempt to bomb them out 75 yards into a river. I was getting frustrated, I had a goal to catch catfish, virtually every other fish was either still hibernating (bass) or out of season (walleye, pike, musky). I decided to go to a place I knew there was catfish (because I had seen them jump clear out of the water) and see if I couldn’t land a little fish using a super tiny lure. I mainly focused on spots really close to the bank where small fish were likely to congregate. And then finally!

I caught a small creek chub! I’ve featured chub before on this blog – with a light rod catching full grown ones are really fun, they are super quick and change direction a ton. I dispatched the fish and cut it up into small pieces, really hoping this would give me a chance. I set up my rod and…. waited.

That’s the thing with bait fishing, you kind of just sit there and look at your rod – it’s fairly boring. I brought a second rod to fish with normally to keep me occupied, but constantly looking at the rod with bait to see if anything is hitting it is super distracting. I started getting bites, but again it’s not like fishing with lures where you immediately set the hook. After losing fish several times I realized you have to be super patient and basically let the fish chew on the bait for a bit.

All of the sudden, my rod basically started getting dragged into the water! I grabbed the rod and, well, waited for a few moments, then set the hook as hard as possible and instantly knew I had something strong on! Turns out, catfish are strong as heck and this guy put up quite the fight!

I was thrilled! Catfish aren’t exactly hard to find, they are a fish with a healthy population and once you know what they like odds are you’ll hook one. This guy was a channel catfish – certainly not the biggest species (flathead catfish) but also not the smallest either (bullhead/hornspout). He was probably around 2 pounds, a normal one can be anywhere between 5 – 15 lbs so the potential to land something bigger is definitely there.

Now, in terms of eating, I had read several conflicting reports. Given catfish generally live on the bottom of muddy rivers, some people claim they taste muddy. Others claim this is simply not true or at least soaking the fillets in buttermilk will get rid of any muddy flavor. I was eager to find out, so I kept this fish and decided I would fry him in a beer batter to compare the taste to the walleye I caught this past November. The final product ended up looking like this:

Simply put, I’ve really learned there’s nothing better than a healthy fresh fish! The fried catfish was delicious – probably not quite as good as the walleye but still seriously good eating. I made some homemade tarter sauce (mayo, relish, and a little hot sauce if you like it) to go with it as well.

So yep, I’ve crossed into the world of fishing with bait and I’m not sure where it’ll take me. All I can do is…

Cast and Pray,

Jon (see below for obligatory cute photo of Bubz)