

All lanty hell, this is where a few bubbas are gonna do some talkin about some dang fishin!
Friday, July 27, 2007
Back For More

Thursday, July 26, 2007
Lake Audubon



Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Matt, Eels, Flats, Blue cats and JD Part One
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!






Thursday, July 19, 2007
In search of huge flatheads...

Thursday, July 12, 2007
Outer Banks and Mixed bag Chesapeake

Rochelle and I went to the outer banks with my brothers family and my Mom. We had a greta time, but I will leave most of them out of the pictures. I fished early mornings 5 of the six days, the first one, spent fishing cut bait, was uneventful, but beautiful.


The next morning I was at Avalon Pier an hour before sunrise, and after a little fumbling I learned to work a gotcha lure from the pier - 10 13-16 inch bluefish and I was back by 10 am. Great morning, but the word on the pier was that the day before they were pulling in 18+ inch blues and Spanish mackerel 15-22 inches. A day late and a dollar short, but a hell of a fun morning.

My bro Dan was convinced and we went back to the pier the next morning on my birthday, the fishing was slower, but we had fun, Dan caught his first bluefish, along with 3 or so more, but the fish were small. I caught two under 10 inches, then landed a feisty 14 incher.

I headed back to Gloucester the next weekend to meet up with the guys and get fitted for the tuxes. Greg ended up being the only one that was able to do it. But Friday night I hung out with my parents and my brother's huge low-slung deck he just built. Dan also bought a trampoline "for his kids". We had to practice our front flips. I landed this one perfectly.





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