It may seem strange, coming from a kid who grew up fishing
in rural central Virginia within minutes of the Rivanna River and the almighty
James, but catfishing is a discipline that evaded my interests and feeble
efforts throughout my childhood. It isn’t a family tradition, as is trout
fishing or deer hunting; I had no teacher.
And though I had countless trout and bass to my name by the time I
achieved adulthood, the number of whiskered fish remained grounded in the
single digits, many of which were caught by accident.
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| Kyle with a small channel cat taken from the Rivanna River |
For that reason, good friend, Brian Bodine, owner of
Razorback Guide Service based out of Scottsville, Virginia, offered to
facilitate my formal introduction to the cats that fin the James River. A heavy
rain swelled the river the day before to a light brown. Debris was running thick. The creeks were being flushed of baitfish.
Marginal action colored the daytime hours, but as the sun
set, we found ourselves positioned downstream from a creek mouth, four
bait-casting rods fanned behind the boat.
As the last bit of light faded from the sky, talk of coyote hunting,
shooting, trail camera pictures, and family took over. The sound of a clicking drag was an
anticipated interruption.
Unfortunately, that sound didn’t surface. Instead, a raucous splashing broke us off in
mid-sentence. A head lamp shined behind
the boat revealed a surge of whitewater, and so I sprung to grab a bent
rod. Several cranks on the reel handle
confirmed that the fish had taken the bait and swam towards the boat and to the
surface. Luckily, he had hooked himself.
Brian’s net job brought into the boat a small channel
catfish of about three pounds.
Nevertheless, such a tasty morsel was relegated to the cooler.
Kayak Kitties
Just a week later, Kyle Jenkins, a childhood friend of mine
of more than 15 years, and I got together to explore a spot on my home river,
the Rivanna, that I had long suspected to sport a thriving catfish population.
After work, we loaded two kayaks into the back of Kyle’s Tacoma and headed for
the river, which was, like the James, slightly inflated in flow.
Spending many summer days on this river with my kayak and no
one to shuttle me taught me to paddle upstream.
It provides a workout and a fun way of fishing. Moreover, water just a few miles upstream
from public landings are often much less-pressured than water downstream, and
the paddling is usually not too
difficult, save for the initial takeoff from the landing.
Our target was a major creek mouth about two miles upstream
where I knew there to be large schools of baitfish holding, as well as some
large carp and smallmouth—a place I had visited a hundred times. However, due to the temporarily high flows,
paddling was a bit harder than usual.
We
paddled and pushed and sweated for a half hour before reaching the slow water
that is the tailout of the creek junction.
There, I optimistically tied on a small yellow Beetle-Spin
to begin my bait-catching efforts. We
didn’t need much. A small bluegill would
do.
In just a few casts, a small bluegill answered my call, and
blindsided the lure in heavy current, forged downstream, and soon was captured
in my hand.
Kyle had fallen behind a bit in the upstream paddle, and
came up on me as I was landing the fish.
We beached our kayaks on the sandbar at the creek mouth, and I utilized
an old, washed-up tire as a cutting board, scaling, filleting, and cutting the
bluegill flesh into strips.
A single strip was used to tip our Carolina rigs, and we
once again took position in our crafts, this time pointing downstream.
A logjam caps the tailout of the run on one side of the
river, and we wedged our kayaks against the bank there, making casts straight
out and across the current. Feeding slack line, I felt my egg sinker hit
bottom, and flipped the bail closed.
Kyle followed suit, and we were set up.
Catfishing is a change of pace in that it is very
social. In fact, waiting for a fish to
present itself in a bouncing rod tip is perhaps the best venue for conversation
I’ve encountered. And often, such
conversations don’t last long.
Kyle’s rod tip was the first to direct attention away from
the topic at hand. Small vibrations
turned to a steady pull, and as the line straightened out towards the center of
the river, a sweep of his rod secured the fate of a small channel cat of about
a pound and a half—his first “on-purpose” cat.
Just minutes later, my own rod dropped, and we finished the
night out with a double.
*Originally published in the Rural Virginian
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