Well I used to weigh everything I caught, but don’t keep the scales down at the dock anymore. We built a fish cleaning station on the dock so we clean fish as we go. I really hadn’t planned on fishing this weekend, but I was cleaning the dock and getting the pontoon to the dock on the boat lift. Just fished a little in between. I’ve got the pontoon rigged with LED green lights underneath and around the boat, so I like to go out after dark and fish the deeper channel with live bait. The fish run 30lb+ in there, catch large Stripped Bass as well, but I don’t like the taste of those.
This is a channel cat. That’s mostly what we catch here. The flatheads I’ve seen here are kind of yellowish colored but most people here throw those back. Here’s a side picture of this channel cat. I clean the heads as well on the big ones. Remove the eyes, bottom jaw and skin. Lots of clean white meat. I boil the skulls to get the meat off for our catfish stew. I’ll try to find the instructional video I posted online years back.
And boy, are they ugly! LOL!
Yeah when was a youngster I always thought they were giant tadpoles. Not pretty but fried fillets and catfish nuggets are coveted here.
This size is and larger are common when using live bait like small fish we catch near the shore.
