# Another night at the pond.



## TritonBill (Apr 9, 2004)

I spent the 2 nights down at the camping and fishing. The first night my family joined me and the second night a friend of mine and my brother. 

We had several good runs on a live bluegill. One fish my brother had on was hilarious. Around 2:30am as all three of us were having trouble staying awake we were woke up by the "ziiinnnnnnggggg" drag sound,a cat tearing out some line! Finally they started biting! We wondered if they would ever start because last night up until around 2:15 am we hadn't had any bites. Saturday night I caught 2 cats before midnight. Weird, I thought on the timing and activity times on the water. Well anyhow, my brother let it pull some line and then set up the fish, Swing and a miss!  He sat the pole back down and not 3 minutes later, "zziiinnnnnggg", again the fish was swimming with the live bluegill. My brother sets the hook, Swing and a miss. Well this went on like 2 more times until on the 4th try he finally got the fish on, was reeling it in and it decided it wanted no part of the bank and he lost it!  We were using bluegill that were about 4 1/2" long.

My fish in the picture came on cut bluegill. For some reason they didn't want the shrimp last night. I have no idea how big it was??? I've def caught bigger there.










Pardon my stupidty but is this a channel or a shovelhead? His lower jaw was recessed farther back in than his upper jaw. I have the worst time telling the catfish apart (channel, shovelhead, flathead, etc.) and I've seen pictures of each. LOL, I see the fish and I just can't figure them out.

By the way, I see a lot of you guys holding the fish by their mouth. I started doing this but those teeth are pretty sharp I thought. Any tricks to positioning of hand / fingers... one time the cat decided it wanted to close its mouth tight and it felt like my finger was caught in vice grips for a split second!! Is the trick to get more of your hand in its outh vs lipping like you would a bass? I need to know cause I surely don't want my hand or fingers broke! I definately could tell that that fish was very tough and had powerful jaws.

I'm glad to see the bluegill worked vs the Shrimp because in my previous attempts to use live bait (around 8 years ago) I didn't fair too well.


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## TIGHTLINER (Apr 7, 2004)

Good Fishing Bill! That there is a nice Channel Catfish. Flatheads and Shovelheads are the same thing. As far as the size of that catfish goes, I'm not even going to speculate because size estimations always end up turning into a war on this site. LOL The fish looks real nice, it might have been awful close to a fish ohio. I never use shrimp. I prefer cut shad, but I have been known to use live suckers, blue gills, shiners, and perch as well as crayfish and/or nightcrawlers. I don't know much about flathead catfishing but as far as Channel Catfishing goes, I think I know a thing or two about catching them. So if you ever want to hit West Branch for a night of catfishing let me know. TightLines!


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## TritonBill (Apr 9, 2004)

Tightliner, we'll have to go out sometime for sure. I've got the one in my photo album that is bigger than that one from last night by a good bit. 

My biggest worry is that the big cats are eating all the bass in the pond. The pond doesn't have near the bass that it used to have and most of them are running like 8-12" that you catch now. 10 years ago they were running 1-4lbs or so. I'm not sure what happend but I know there are a lot of big channel cats in there. What do you guys think?

I brought those 2 cats home for dinner!


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## Shortdrift (Apr 5, 2004)

I never knew how hard a fish can clamp down on something until I was trying to get my bare hand out of the mouth of a 30" channel cat.  I actually had bruises along with the multiple small holes in my fingers. I had seen all the pictures of people holding the large fish by the jaw and figures it was OK. Bad mistake.  I have only hoisted one large flathead but he did not clamp down half as hard and was a least four times heavier than the channel. Guess every rookie has to learn.


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## TritonBill (Apr 9, 2004)

Grin, I'll take the advice/lessons learned and play it safe!


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## shuvlhed1 (Apr 13, 2004)

I try to avoid sticking my hand into a channel cats mouth. You tend to lose skin and a little blood if you do that.


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