Fishing Forum

I got another chance to go fishing today and I saw some very large fish today...but I didn't catch any of them. I went back to Patten Island a little earlier this morning but a couple of guys were already camped out on my point but I stayed off in the distance a couple of hundred yards away. I catch 4 or 5 decent crappie while they fish then they start heading toward me and ask me if I want a catfish ? I said well, thanks...but I'm crappie fishing right now. He said so are we but we just caught a huge catfish. I had heard them carrying on about something for about 15 minutes. He lifted up what looked like about a 35 pound flathead. They didn't know if it was a blue or a flathead and I said...it's a flathead. He caught it on a Southern Pro curly tail...on 4lb. test line ! Well done ! We chatted for awhile I mentioned some of Eric's skill with 6 pound test. <br /><br />My fishing trip today was a spur of the moment decision to get out to try to catch another TARP crappie plus look for shellcrackers beds. I didn't catch any large crappie today but I caught 16 with 9 keepers....14 bream..."6" small channel cats...2 bluegill...1 yellow bass. I have one place where I know shellcrackers are but it's a fairly long trip so maybe I'll try to go tomorrow. I never got gas from my last trip and was running on fumes and my trolling motor battery was dead so that's why I didn't go far. As for the fish I mostly used grubs and a 1-inch nightcrawler on a 1/32. oz jig head and had another rod out with just a 1-inch nightcrawler fishing on the bottom. Almost all of the catfish were caught on the 1/32 oz. jig head which was fun. I always run into a lot of channel cats around the islands. I saw 4 gar early in the day and about the largest I had ever seen "until" I was close to ending my trip and ran across a massive fish close to 5 feet long ! I'm a little embarrassed to say I'm not quite sure what this is ? Some sort of shovelbill gar that I'm not aware of ? I first thought it was a paddlefish ? Whatever it is it had no fear of me or my boat. In fact when I first stopped next to it I thought it was a log then "whoosh" it's bill, snout, whatever, goes up in the air a foot and makes a big splash. I was leaning against my butt seat and it scared the living daylights out of me and I just about fell in the water. It never would leave and kept swimming around my boat and I could have reached out and touched it if I wanted too. I watched it for over 5 minutes before it dawned on me to take some pics. Here's a few plus a male crappie still dressed in his tuxedo.