You see, there has been a growing epidemic for some time now that has been causing landowners to post their property as private and not allow anglers access without permission. This epidemic is called 'Litter'. It's an easily avoidable epidemic if everyone would cooperate and stop being a bunch of slobs. It's not difficult to carry the trash out that you carried in, but it seems that some people are very resistant, if not completely ignorant to the fact that trash isn't supposed to be thrown onto the ground for someone else to clean up. I could go into details as to whom I suspect are the culprits of the littering epidemic, but the truth is that these lazy slobs come in all sorts of shapes and colors. These days we always bring a trash bag and try to clean up the areas we enjoy fishing at, even if we know that it's a losing battle. I have contemplated making signs up in both English and Spanish, asking people not to litter. I figured I would be wasting my time. Moving on.
We started checking out local ponds and streams. The roadside streams were a lot more accessible and one night I fished a small stream and saw a rather large Bowfin in the waters right below my feet. I figured that was a good sign that there were more fish in this stream. Over the next few months that summer, we caught plenty of brown bullhead, a couple of small bowfins and a few brim out of that stream. We also caught a few snapping turtles that I coerced off of our lines. This year we have had no luck there, but we've only tried briefly a couple of times on our way home from the Nuese river. Catching bullhead brought a lot of childhood memories back from when my Grandfather would take me out with a bucket of stripped fresh-water muscles and a Coleman lantern and we'd return home well after dark with a nice catch of bullhead.
Catching those Bullhead was fun, but we craved the bigger cats, so we started checking out fishing ares along the Nuese river. We didn't have any luck in most spots, but we didn't give up, although Caine wanted to at times when we would get snagged. We try to avoid those spots now.
One August night, after Hurricane Irene rolled through N.C., we decided to try a spot that we hadn't tried before. After a few hours and it getting close to 9:00 pm, we were just about to give up when my sons Zebco closed face bait caster almost took a swim. Caine was getting quite comfortable, almost falling asleep in one of those collapsible camping chairs when I saw the tip of his pole slightly jump before going for a full bend. I smacked his arm and said "grab your pole". He jumped up, grabbed his poll and started to reel in. His drag was set at a moderate tension, but as he reeled, we heard nothing but whining. I adjusted his drag as he held on. He stated, "I think I'm just snagged". I thought maybe, but not likely. Taking the pole from him, I gave it a tug and felt and strong tug answering my own. I said you're not snagged, grab my gloves. I reeled the fish in some more as he grabbed my gloves to get it closer to the bank. He handed me my Berkley fishing gloves (box-handler gloves) and handed him back the pole, telling him to keep the tip up. I grabbed the line and followed it down to the waiting fish, reached in it's mouth and pulled out the biggest catfish I had ever seen in real life. My son said, "We can go home now". I laughed and said that we should try to let me catch one. I tried putting the catfish in my 5 gallon bucket, like a fool, and it simply fell over because the fish was way to big for the bucket and I didn't have a stringer at the time. I said, "I think you're right". We packed up our stuff and headed out, grinning ear-to-ear.
My wife was pretty impressed with the Blue Catfish that we caught. It only weighed in at about 11 lbs with a length of 32 inches, but it was certainly a beautiful fish and we were happy with our catch. More Blue Cat' experiences coming soon.
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