From one of the blog’s on my blogroll – Alpha Trilogy, this article is one of the more unique freshwater fishing blog posts I have ever read.  I had no idea that spearfishing was legal in freshwater anywhere in the United States.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.  I mean bowfishing is legal, so why not spearfishing.  I guess that I was surprised you are allowed to harvest game fish.

My wife Kara and I headed up to Kerr Lake on Friday evening with our friends to camp overnight and do some fishing.  After catching a little bait under one of the many bridges on the lake, we headed to a nice sandy beach and cooked some hotdogs and marshmallows. 

While we were relaxing by the campfire, I managed to pull in 2 channel catfish with a helping of Catfish Dynamite ‘Cheese’ dipbait.  That is some nasty stuff, but catfish can’t get enough of it.  One of the fish pulled the rod down off its prop-stick and we didn’t notice it was gone until it was almost too late…completely submerged and headed towards the depths, I picked up the rod at the last second and reeled in one of the catfish. 

The wind picked up a little, so we moved the boat to a sheltered cove and laid out the sleeping bags.  Great night’s sleep under the stars…woke up several times to critters swimming in the water, a barn owl hooting, and the startling grunts of a great blue heron. 

Next morning, we headed to one of our favorite fishing holes and tossed out 8 noodles and drifted with 7 baits of our own spread around the boat.  Nothing.  Next spot….noodles and drift….nothing.  Repeat 2 more times….nothing!  The catfish were absolutely not interested in biting.  It must have been a combination of a full moon, abundant forage source (baby shad??? EVERYWHERE!…gar were having a hayday!)  I’m assuming the catfish were bloated after a night’s gorging on prey, but who knows.  Bottom line, I’m glad the Catfish Dynamite produced on Friday night or we would have gotten skunked. 

A promising rocky point with nearby deep river channel, light colored specks to the right of the point are our noodles…’promising’ is the deciding word here….no fulfillment!

We did get the treat of watching 2 fawns play around the water’s edge about 150 yards away from one of our fishing holes.  In the photo, you can barely see one between the 2 logs on the edge of the water. 

All in all, it was a great trip and the weather was beautiful.  Great campfire food and some time spent with friends.  What more could you ask for?…except a few more catfish.

We used some awesome catfish noodles over the 4th at Kerr Lake.  Here’s a picture and I’ll try to describe how they were put together so you can make some for yourself.  They work AWESOME!

The noodles basically consisted of a 15-18″ section of swimming pool noodle, a PVC pipe that barely  fits through the noodle’s hole (about 6 inches longer than the noodle section), 2 PVC pipe caps, a metal eyelet, 2″ section of metal rod that fits inside PVC pipe, and of course the fishing line, sinker, and business end (circle hook). 

After you have jammed the PVC pipe into the noodle, cap off one end and move it until it is flush with one end of the noodle.  Insert the chunk of metal rod in the other end and cap that off.  Next screw a metal eyelet in the exposed end of the PVC pipe and attach the business end of the fishing noodle.  You can wind the line right around the noodle and secure the hook directly into the foam.

You’re probably wondering what the chunk of metal is doing inside the PVC pipe…If you set the baited noodle in the water with weight at the end of the PVC that is flush with the noodle…A strike will jerk the noodle down and send the weight to the other end making a loud noise – basically alerting you to a hooked fish.  If the fish comes unhooked or misses the strike, the noodle will remain erect and let you find it to check the bait. 

These noodles worked unbelievably well…put to shame previous jugs I had used to catfish in other rivers.  The one drawback is that a good sized catfish can keep one of these noodles underwater for quite a long time, so make sure you get a hooked catfish off as soon as possible, especially if you suspect a lunker. 

Leave any comments if I wasn’t as clear as I need to be with the instructions.

Oh, forgot to mention, the PVC provides a great surface for writing your name, phone #, and depth of line with a black Sharpie marker. 

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! 

Looks like I’ll be bumming it with the wife and another couple on Kerr Lake for this year’s holiday.  We’ll be on the way early in the morning towards the lake and spend the day fishing, eating, swimming, and who knows what else.  Should have a good fishing report for the crappie and catfish bite on Saturday.  I spent an hour last night tearing apart fishing reels and re-greasing them from the recent beach trips and rigging them with swivels, egg sinkers, and circle hooks.  Going to try and catch some cut bait tonight out of a local pond and then test the waters first thing in the morning.  I think my buddy got a hold of about a dozen noodle-jugs for catfishing too.  Probably keep a few 3-5 pounders for the dinner table and turn back the rest for next time.  Anyways, hope everyone has a great 4th of July and best of luck fishing if that is also in your plans!

Well, I was introduced to this website, The Tallahatchie Catfish Production Company, by a post on a bowfishing forum I keep tabs on several times a week. One of the newer members enjoys one of the rarer art forms of catfishing and his crew has put together a great website on grabbling catfish! Now, I will tell you that I will try anything once, but I guarantee that the day I go noodling, I’ll be saying my prayers before I go sticking my hand into the jaws of a big flathead! Talk about a nervous feeling. These guys (and gals) seem to have a great method of sinking custom-made fish boxes into the river and then making the rounds at a later date. I believe I would definitely prefer that method as opposed to sticking my hand at random up under an eroded riverbank. Can you say….SNAPPING TURTLE!!! Anyways, check out this website, I think you’ll enjoy the stories, pictures and some great videos of big fighting catfish and even more determined noodlers!