Southerncats, Pickwick and Wheeler, Catfishing, 6/27/09, Keith "Catfish" Sutton, Theresa Sutton, Gre

[FishNews]

I had a wonderful Saturday taking not one but two outdoor writers along for some Southern Catfishing on the Tennessee River. I had the pleasure of taking Keith "Catfish" Sutton and his wife Theresa for a 4 hour trip in morning and Greg McCain for about 3 hours in the evening. It's been a few weeks since I have tried cattin, so I was definitely feeling some pressure with the nations if not the world's most known catfish writer in the boat with me. We fished on Both Wheeler and Pickwick today and to my surprise we done well. I don't often fish in June due to the spawn, it's kind of hard to coax them out of there spawning haunts, unless you want to stick your hands in there and let them latch on. All of the males we caught today looked as they had just finished up guarding there nest, they were badly scratched on there backs and extremely thin. I guess with all the hot weather we have been having most cats are coming off are already off the nest, so in other words the catfishing should continue to get better.<br /><br />We started the morning early with some Wheeler lake blue cats we landed 3 cats including a 26, 30, and 46 Lber. The 46 had a huge head and was very long probably 48 inches or so, but it was very skinny (Snakey Lookin) and skinned up bad as well. If that fish had been healthy and fat like the ones I was catching in the winter and early spring it probably would have went 60-65 lbs easy. We then trailer down to Wilson dam and land 2 more nice cats weighing 26 and 24 Lbs before we got run off by the heat of the day at around 11:30 A.M.<br /><br />Later on around 3:30 P.M. I met up with Greg McCain a local freelance outdoor writer from Russellville, Alabama. After witnessing a couple local fisherman getting busted by Mr. Warden for having 6 cats over the 34inch size regulation, we hit the tailwaters of Wilson Dam. We caught roughly 15 cats most ranging from 5-15 lbs but we did catch one trophy that topped the scales at 41 pounds. Sorry no pics from the afternoon trip.<br />