Pamunkey Trip

Today was COLD, WET and WINDY! but we still caught some fish. Water was extremly high so we took a while getting bait. Once that was done we hit the first spot. Started out with a nice 20 pounder. The next spot produced the big fish for the day which was 26 pounds. Ended up the day heading back down river to try and find some stripers but it didn't happen. Tough day but still a success.




Went hunting after we got done fishing and I had wore just about all my warm clothes while we fished so I didn't want to were them in the woods. I froze on the stand after freezen all day on the water...not fun!

Nice 32 on the CATFISH CADILLAC!

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Trip Sunday Oct 11.

Today I took out 5 on the Catfish Cadillac. Big fish for the day was 33. Fun group.




I don't remember the weights if you guys do email me or post them.

Big Fish

Here is a picture of a 53 Capt. Joe caught last week.

Sunday we took out our Bosnian Buddies Amir and crew. Had an okay day considering we don't normally day fish in September. The fish are still a little more active at night right now. We ended up with fish of 5, 6, 8, 10, 18, 19, 28 and 29.

$50 off Trip

I will give $50 off anyone who books a trip for this week for 2 or 3 people. The trip is good for this week only Monday - Friday night. As long as this post is up the offer is still up for grabs.

I am giving away 2 of these. That's $300 for two people and some Big Cats!

Bob's new Personal Best

Bob "the mailman" is one of my dads fishing buddies. He and my dad went out Thursday night and caught a 38 and this 63 on the James.

More Good Fishin!

Monday Night I took my friend Jeff, his dad and uncle out to try for a repeat of Friday night. We caught the tide a little different but we came close. It was also a heat index Monday of over 105. We started off at the usual spot for bait and we were not disappointed. I caught about 15 in no more than 10 minutes with the cast net. I also had about an 18 pound blue in my cast net. I tried a new place on the first spot of the night and didn't get anything. That spot looked really good though I look forward to giving it another shot after dark next time. The second spot we went to had a double waiting for us. We got a 22 and 23 there. The next spot was a deep hole around some shallower water. This is typically a better spot but this time only produced two slightly below average fish. It was now time to go to the spot that produced the most fish Friday night and see what happened. Well it didn't disappoint. It was quite as good but not too far off. We caught 4 fish over 20 there including the big fish of the night a 38. After this we ran into some problems with tide but still managed a few more fish and a small striper under a light at the dock. Another great night not on the James... :)

Good Fishin

Fishing has been pretty good lately. I took a buddy out Friday night for some cats. The night started off great when we didn't even have to catch bait because my dad was out there and he caught way more than he needed(always a good problem to have.) So we headed up the river a bit. The first place we stopped at was about 10 feet of water and there we shad jumping everywhere which is really funny to watch. No much at that spot caught one around 15 pounds. The next spot produced 2 fish a 10 and a 24 pound Blue Catfish. I decided to go and try something new so we headed out to a channel edge of the main river and proceded to catch fish for the next 2 hours. At this spot we had 6 fish over 20 pounds including a 54.

Our total for the night was 5,10,10,15,15,20,20,20,20,21,24,27, and the 54

This was not on the James River.... :)

Redskin Tickets

I need tickets. I would like to trade someone a trip for up to 3 people for 2 Redskin Tickets. Must be decent seats(no nose bleeds!) I don't care which game it is. Let me know if you want to make a trade!

Oh yeah included parking pass is even better!



Send me an email with ticket info. info@catchbigfish.net

Speckled Trout

Speckled Trout I caught in Oregon Inlet, NC

James Report - Capt. Joe

Last night Capt. Joe and 1st mate Bob went out on the James for a few hours and had a really good trip. As you can see from past reports it has been a little hit or miss lately on the James but last night it was really on. They caught fish of 4,12,14,16,27,31,40 and a 20 pound flathead. They didn't go out till 8 and were back at the dock by 12:30.

Saturday Night Report

Fished Saturday night with Mr. Stevens and his son. We caught about 5 or 6 fish. The biggest 3 were 20, 23 and 23. We missed quite a few other fish that I'm sure were good sized fish. We were on the Pamunkey. Pics to come...

Pamunkey vs. James

So most know who have gone out with me before that I am not a big fan of summertime /night fishing. Summertime can be just so unpredictable. Sometimes you can find the fish but you just can't get them to bite. It is very fustrating. So Tursday night I had a trip on the James River and it was typical summertime. We got skunked! We marked fish everywhere and never even got a good bite. My dad was also out thursday night and he had even fewer bites than we did. I was pretty irritated about those results Thursday so Last night I went to the Pamunkey River. My dad also went with his boat. My goal was to fish in similar weather conditions as Thurday night and the smae type of bait and compare the results of the two rivers.

I have been fishing the pamunkey for about 5 years but not nearly as often as the James. I don't have nearly as many "holes" there but I know there is a ton of stuff to fish and I just havn't found it all yet. I also have never been able to catch bait on the pamunkey and would always have to bring my own.

Last night I finally figured out the bait and I don' tthink I will ever have to worry about bait again there. I fished from 6:30 until about 2am ans ended up with 6 fish, a 10, 14, 14, 20, 23 and a 36. Now I would have like to have 1 or 2 more over 30 but when you look at how we did Thursday night i am pretty happy. My dad also did well last night and caught an 8, 10, 32 and a 41.

Round 1 goes to the Pamunkey!

23

36

Sweatshirts

I am also having some sweatshirts made. If anyone is interested in getting one let me know. They will be ordered on Monday at 12:00. They will cost about $45.00. I know thats a lot but I cant control the price unless I order a lot of them. The more we order the cheaper they are.

Pamunkey River

I went out last night to the Pamunkey River which is another awesome river for big catfish. If you have been with me before you have probably heard me talk about it. We saw 1 other boat all night not including my dad who also was out. I've attached a video of our night. It was probably one of our worst trips as far as numbers of fish goes but it was funny and relaxing to be back there. We had one fish that was 47 pounds and my dad had a 10, 24 and 30. The bite was very slow but the weird part was we had 4 hits throughout the night were the fish slammed the pole and pulled drag and then right when you went to pick it up they dropped it. I sat its weird but it is something that has happened before but it just doesn't make sense to me. I talk to someone who fished the James last night and they said the bite was the same there so it must of been a weather related thing.


I tried to download a "bleep" sound for the video but couldn't find one. There is some bad language so be warned.

New Shirts

I am trying to design some new shirts for '09 Here is what I have so far. Please tell me what you think. I'm probably gonna have to sell them for about $25. That looks like how much its gonna cost to make them.Let me know if you think you are going to want one.

Time to start Catfishing!

Well it's about that time again. Spawn should be about done and some fish are being caught. I did hear for a 60+ last week as well as Capt. Joe(aka my dad) caught on 56 last week. I'm sure ill have some reports after the weekend. As you can see from my previous post I have been focusing my attention over this spawing period on saltwater. It's good to get a change of scenery sometimes. We haven't had much success but we have been learning everytime and will get us a cobia eventually. Tautog season is getting ready to come back in and that is when we will really bring home the meat!

Hatteras 09

Well its a little bit of a different story than last year. This year the forcast was for SE 10-15 mph and that just don't work from a 19' boat in Hatteras Inlet. Last year the wind was NE which has the inlet and the fishing grounds blocked by land.We caught a bunch of rays and sharks. We saw a small hammerhead swimming in the water. We caught spanish mackeral and bluefish. I never saw any cobia and I think only a few were caught while we were there. The only drum we caught was from the surf on sunday afternoon. We will be back next year to try again.

Here is a picture of the closed beach that lead to the point...

New State Record Blue Catfish

No I didn't catch it. Two guys caught this earlier today and had it weighted in and certified as the new state record at Green Top today. I think the official weight was 102.5 Pounds.

That's an amazing fish and I am glad the James River has broken the 100# mark. Now we need to get that World Record!

Hilton Head Fishing

This is a picture of us cobia fishing in Hilton Head, SC

notice the lack of cobia.....

Here are some other fish we caught in the saltwater ponds there.

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Clark 4-19-09

Sunday I had a group of 6. We took the pontoon so we would have enough room for all of us and it work out nice. We have beautiful weather and some great fishing. We started out getting some fresh bait and as usual it was pretty easy to get. We caught a couple stripers and small cats at our first spot. We sat here for a few hours because we were catching fish and bait and it was a fun spot. Around 1030 we headed down river a little ways and as soon as we got the baits in the water we hooked up with our biggest cat of the day. He was 55 pounds. A little while later we cught another striper and a 25 pound cat. Our totals for the day were 7-8 cats under 10 pounds 23, 25 and 55 pound Blue Catfish and 10, 21, 24 and 32 pound Stripers.

Something Different

Well for the last two days I took out two brothers who came all the way from Canada to fish for big blues on the James. They were really looking to get a blue over 50 pounds, but were also very interested in Flatheads and Striper. So.....

Day 1: We started out getting some fresh live bait to try for flatheads. We had also planned on doing some hickory shad fishing. Well while we were catching bait I realized that one of my shad reels was messing up. I called my dad and asked him to bring me another. So we stopped at a pretty good spot to "kill time" while we were waiting. Well in the 15-20 minutes we sat there we had two fish. After about 5 minutes we had our first blue cat that weighed in at 36 pounds.

Not 10 minutes later we had our second one that ended up being the biggest for the 2 days He weighed in at 55 pounds.

What a great way to start the trip! After that we headed up river and caught a few Hickory shad. We didn't catch a lot of them but it was a cold and rainy day so it was sort of expected. We caught plenty of herring though and they are a lot of fun. We spent probably 4 hours trying to get on a flathead. We had no problem getting them to bite but we could not get hooked up. We did eventualy land this 15 pound flathead.

In our search for a big flathead we had two very dissappointing things happen and both at the same spot. We had one rod with the bait clicker on with a live bait on it and out of no where this thing got hammered!! Don't know how but the hook didn't stick and we lost it. Probably a big striper. Then later we had one of our cat rods get hit and it was one of the hardest hits I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure it was a Blue cat that hit. I'll take the blame on this one, apparently when I was checking the drags I missed this one. When this fish hit, the rod slammed down so hard the line snapped and about 20 feet of line came flying back into the boat like a whip. We had a few other small fish that day but nothing too exciting.

Day 2:

Day two was to be our big catfish day. Long story short that didn't work out as planned. It was supposed to blow 10 - 15mph. It was more like steady 20-25. My downriver spots were unfishable. We tried them anyway which was a waste of time. We worked our way back up river steadily hitting good spots that were out of the wind along the way. Nothing was happening, just fish 10 and under. About 3:30 I decided I was going to go all the way back up river and get some fresh bait and start over. We got the bait and minutes after got this 18 pound Flathead and some more small blues.

The we tried the spot that produced the big fish the day before with no luck. In a last ditch effort I headed a few miles down river to a spot that I have caught some stripers in the past and is also good for cats. Well this turned out to be a great move. With in minutes of putting out bait Neil was fighting with his first striper that came in at 23 pounds.

After that his brother got his first stiper that was 21 pounds.

Over the next hour we caught 6 stripers totaling 111 pounds. We had fish of 10, 12, 20, 21, 23 and 25 pounds. This was a lot of fun. We missed a bunch of fish during this stretch too. We had one break off and a couple drop the bait as they ran with it. A lot of fun though.

Thanks again guys for coming from so far away to fish.