We got our catfishing gear pulled together on Thursday evening and managed to catch some bait out of a local pond.  Friday morning came early - woke up at 4:30 - and were up to the lake by 7:00 a.m.  We stopped under the bridge to catch a few crappie to supplement our bait supply, but they weren’t biting very well and we only managed 2 before calling it quits with the small game. 

Kara and Grace slept on the boat for a while, but the action started to pick up as soon as we started tossing noodles in the water where the Roanoke and Dan Rivers confluence in the lake just north of Clarksville. 

We tossed 15 noodles with cut bait and then sat back to wait.  We caught 8 catfish over the next 3 or 4 hours, but had twice as many strikes…could have been gar or small ones…we’ll never know.  4 of the cats were 1.5 - 3.5 pounds and the other 4 were 7 lbs., 9, 9, and 10 pounds.  We did lose one blue cat that was pushing into the 15 pound range right at the boat, but that was the only one. 

We drifted cut bait for a couple hours later in the morning, but only managed 1 fish … this medium sized gar.  I think the cats had pretty much shut down their bite because the noodles weren’t drawing much attention either by that time.

Rest of the day consisted of eating a bunch of food, swimming, tubing, and just spending a good 4th of July on the lake with friends. 

Took quite a while to clean up the boat back at their house, but it was well worth it with more than 10 pounds of white fillets to show for.  We grilled one big catfish fillet in aluminum foil with butter and lemon pepper.  It was delicious!

Hope everyone else had a great Fourth of July!