Its been almost two years since Matt Grimes and I have hit our cat fishing honey-hole we found while Matt was working on a big mural in the Shockoe Bottom section of Richmond. Matt has since moved to DC with his girlfriend Paulina and set up a ceramics studio in NE DC. We've both been busy and really haven't had a chance to go fish together. Friday we made it happen. Usually we like to get there early in the day and catch bait, along with a few small mouths, then cat fish throughout the afternoon and evening. We were cramped for time, so we hit a bait store and got the biggest minnows we could buy and a bunch of eels. We hiked into our spot and waded in to river for a long haul of cat fishing all afternoon and night. Our buddy JD made an appearance, but was long gone by the time it got dark. We had our hearts set on some citations like we had caught before, but the store-bought bait didn't quite do the trick, although we landed a mess of big fish (we didn't weigh anything under 8 lbs) and had some "reel" redneck fun.
Matt got right down to business, within 5 minutes of his first cast, while I was still rigging up, Matt hooked into the biggest flathead for the day - check out the bend in that medium-heavy rod! You can barely see the flathead in the lower left hand corner.
These huge fish are masters of camouflage, they blend right in with the rocks on the bottom and vary in color from dark brown and black speckles to bright mossy green. Check out the mouth on this hog, it could easily swallow Matt's foot.
Here is a shot of the cat - 37" (3" short of a citation) and weighed 20 lbs. You can't really get an idea of the girth of this fish from the shot, these fish are solid and hard as a rock, all muscle and head- Matt was happy.
Here is another flathead Matt caught on an eel, this was a little bigger than the average flathead we caught, around 10-12lbs and over 24". Once again, check out the cool coloration and camouflage effect.
Here was my best blue cat of the day, it went 9lbs 4oz. I didn't measure it, but it was probably 28" or so.
We caught a ton of fish and didn't get back to the truck until after 3 am. Matt took a bunch of photos too, including quite a few at night. I've added him as a contributer to this blog, so he should be posting his photos and tell the second half of the story, so look forward to that coming soon! Tight lines!
Matt got right down to business, within 5 minutes of his first cast, while I was still rigging up, Matt hooked into the biggest flathead for the day - check out the bend in that medium-heavy rod! You can barely see the flathead in the lower left hand corner.
These huge fish are masters of camouflage, they blend right in with the rocks on the bottom and vary in color from dark brown and black speckles to bright mossy green. Check out the mouth on this hog, it could easily swallow Matt's foot.
Here is a shot of the cat - 37" (3" short of a citation) and weighed 20 lbs. You can't really get an idea of the girth of this fish from the shot, these fish are solid and hard as a rock, all muscle and head- Matt was happy.
Here is another flathead Matt caught on an eel, this was a little bigger than the average flathead we caught, around 10-12lbs and over 24". Once again, check out the cool coloration and camouflage effect.
Here was my best blue cat of the day, it went 9lbs 4oz. I didn't measure it, but it was probably 28" or so.
We caught a ton of fish and didn't get back to the truck until after 3 am. Matt took a bunch of photos too, including quite a few at night. I've added him as a contributer to this blog, so he should be posting his photos and tell the second half of the story, so look forward to that coming soon! Tight lines!
