Broad and Reel

What is an appropriate first post for a brand new blog? I’m not sure, after all how often do you start a blog. So I thought the best way is maybe to tell the stories about the big fish in my header.

The first picture is a giant flathead catfish that I caught in the Allegheny River near Pittsburgh, PA.  My boyfriend and I tried for months to catch flathead catfish, but we had no luck…we continued to catch the same sized channel catfish and blue catfish.

But in May of ‘07, my persistent boyfriend figured out that the flathead monsters hung out below the dam and that’s where I caught my first flathead.

Before heading down to lock 3 on the Allegheny River, we’d head to a local lake to catch big blue gills on poppers. We’d take the blue gills down to the river to use for bait.

To get close enough to cast right below the dam, you have to wade across the knee deep river. Now if I had waders on I’d be fine but wading across the river in flip flops at dusk was not my favorite. I actually lost a flip flop while wading on the same night I caught the big catfish.

Not long after dark, the catfish would start to feed and that’s when I hooked my big fish. They don’t fight that hard…it feels like a big log. When you do get the fish on the shore, they are surprisingly gentle (compared to other catfish). We think my fish was about 30lbs.

Below is a larger picture of my fish. The quality is pretty poor (cell phone) but you can get a good idea of how big he (or she) was. By the way, their teeth are similiar to sandpaper. It didn’t really hurt to hold him but my finger tips were bleeding a bit after I put him back.