Fishing For A Muddy River Monster!

Howdy everyone I'm back at it again it's a beautiful summer evening here in North Dakota kind of a spur-of-the-moment trip this time I really wasn't planning on coming out today the weather was kind of nasty earlier in the day it was supposed to be that way all day but cleared up turned out to be a perfect evening out here so I had a few hours free responsibility I figured I'd head out here to the river with my kayak and try for some channel cats I've never fished this stretch of river before but I was looking at it on google maps right up around the bend here from where I launched there's a small creek that flows in we got a little bit of rain this morning and a thunderstorm the other day so there might be some fresh water flowing in through that creek so that's where I'm paddling up to we'll go check it out drop some bait and see if we can get bit I gotta say it is a little bit spooky paddling out here I've already bumped into a couple logs or boulders or something that I could not see the water is super low out here right now it's really not moving fast at all so those deadheads really do not show themselves in the current at all I'm taking it a little bit slow I don't want to cruise along too fast and end up bumping into something and flipping over so I'm gonna keep paddling my way up to the spot we'll be up there in a few minutes all right I made it up here to where the creek flows in really doesn't look like much as low as the water is out here right now but there was a nice deep hole right out in front of it it gets down to about 11 and a half feet deep there the deepest I saw paddling up here was about nine feet deep so I've got high hopes for this spot got myself anchored here there's a little bit of a shallow hump dropped my power pole anchor on that so I'm sitting facing downstream I'll give you guys a quick look at the setup I'm using so I've got a six foot six medium heavy power fast action St. Croix triumph rod maybe a little bit light for catfishing but that medium heavy works well enough I've got a quantum vapor reel on that 30 pound power pro super slick v2 I've actually got another rod identical to this back here behind me I still got to get that one set up after I get my first line in but I'll show you my catfish setup here pretty much your standard catfish rig got that 30 pound braid leading to a swivel right there on the braid end of that I've got a three ounce sliding sinker little rubber bead there to help protect the knot and then on the other side of that swivel I've got about 14 inches of 20 pound mono with a 5 oz octopus hook and for bait today we're going to use some raw shrimp time's kind of limited today so I didn't want to waste valuable fishing time by making an extra stop at the bait shop so shrimp it is today I just like to rig those up so that that hook point is exposed a little bit let's toss it out there and see if we get bit that looks like a good spot all right I've got both my lines in it's time to sit back relax and wait for something to come along and bite I'm getting some little nibbles at this one here we'll see how well that shrimp does sometimes if there's a lot of smaller fish around just nibbling at it that shrimp is a little bit easy for them to pull off the hook that seems to be the case I did bring a light spinning rod set up I might throw a slit bobber rig on that throw a little piece of that shrimp on there and try to catch a goldeye use that for cut bait there's one oh that's a good fish that did not take too long at all I've got that bait in the water for maybe 10 minutes now man those channel cats fight so hard I think I almost got him up here nope he does not want to come up there he is oh that's a big one that's a big one you guys need to get that net ready come on up here jeez holy that is a monster catfish that is a monster I need to get him in the net here jeez oh my gosh get in my net wow look at this channel cat you guys how was that for the first fish of the day I need to just set that rod down and collect myself for a minute man that was a crazy fight don't tell me I got one on this rod too now I had one for a second I'm just gonna reel this one in real quick and we'll deal with this fish yeah I got my bait stripped there anyway get this guy unhooked there we go got him on the good old cocktail shrimp wow look at that catfish all right you guys I got that fish unhooked I threw him on my scale real quick he is 16 pounds even what a start to the day it took all of about 10-15 minutes to hook into that fish beauty of a channel cat all right let's let him go get that bait back in the water and see if we can get another one you know as much as I enjoy the excitement of fishing bass and pike and muskies sometimes it is kind of nice to just come out and drop anchor let some bait soak take in some nature yeah it's a perfect night for that out here so I've had these lines back in the water for about 15 minutes now this one was getting nibbled on the first 10 minutes and then nothing so I'm gonna reel it in and see if I've still got bait down there I'm guessing I might have gotten stripped yep that's the only downside to using shrimp for bait it's not real tough for him to pull it off the hook see how much shrimp we've got left oh maybe half dozen it's kind of my main concern is running out of bait at this point kind of zigzag that hook through there to try to hold it a little bit better that should work we'll toss it back out there hopefully we can get at least one more big cat before we run out of shrimp I don't know if I get down to one I might get out my spinning rod and put out a gold eye setup with a little piece of shrimp try to extend our bait situation a little bit no complaints out of me though we've got one big fish in the boat already if I could get at least one more I'd be pretty happy out of bait on that one yeah I got stripped again all right so I think it's time to come to terms with the fact that I am running low on bait I'm gonna check this one too just to make sure I've still got something on there nope that one was stripped too so I'm gonna get this one set up again and then I set up my little spinning rod with a slip bobber rig I'm gonna throw it a little piece of shrimp I've got maybe I don't know a foot and a half of line out underneath that slip bobber we'll just toss that right over here in this corner see if we can't catch a gold eye to use as cut bait so we can extend our bait a little bit in fact I'm gonna snip this piece off right here it'll just throw that little tail piece on my hook and the rest of it here I'll put on my catfish rig we'll just hook just like that I don't know I don't know if gold eye will eat that I don't see why they wouldn't we'll give it a try that is kind of a rigged slip bobber setup because the one thing I forgot was a split shot sinker all I had was some Nikko weights so I just kind of cut one in half and tied it on there good enough hopefully there's some gold eye over there if we could catch one of those and use it for cut bait that would be awesome all right we'll let that one sit keep an eye on that bobber rig oh something hit it there that's good to see those gold eye are definitely going to try to eat that shrimp tail a couple more tails in here too we'll maybe just toss another one of those tails on I don't even think there's any meat in that one but it's probably all right it's got some scent to it bumped my shrimp over there what was that we're trying to catch a gold eye with my other rod here there we go doesn't feel real big he's just a little guy catfish number two quite a bit smaller than that first one but hey it's some action it's probably a bunch of these little guys down there that's what's been nibbling at my shrimp I'd imagine get that hook out of them yeah if I felt like bringing home a couple for dinner that would be a perfect size eater right there but we're letting them go today oh yeah he was ready to swim lost track of my other line there so I've got maybe two pieces of shrimp left I think so I'm really hoping a gold eye will come along and hit that slip bobber rig over here there's something is that my little gold eye I think it is oh no it's not it's not a gold eye at all well I was hoping for some cut bait but instead we got a little baby catfish isn't he cute yeah unfortunately we got to let him go can't use them for cut bait here in North Dakota really only use rough fish we'll toss that shrimp tail back out I don't know I'm starting to run out of time I haven't had a whole lot of luck trying to find gold eye actually none at all that little cat's the first thing I caught on this setup so we've got maybe I don't know 45 minutes left until I got to start paddling back toward the launch so I'll give it maybe another 15 minutes with this see if I can't catch a gold eye for that last half hour or so but we got two more pieces of shrimp left so if I don't get anything on this in the next 15 minutes I might just throw my other catfish rod back out and see what we can do the last 20 minutes or so something's nibbling at my other rod over there too got him feels like just a little guy little baby cat it's about the size of that one that I cut on my slip bobber well I think I've got one piece of shrimp left we'll give it maybe another 15 minutes or so see if we can get one a little bit bigger than that well unfortunately I didn't have any luck hooking into a last minute monster the sun is set though so it's about time for me to start heading back downstream to my truck I'm not familiar with this stretch of river so I really don't want to have to paddle back in the dark especially right now with the low water level it's not much current flow so it really hides those dead heads right underneath the surface I actually ran into a log on my way up here so I'm gonna take it nice and slow on the way back it was a great evening out here on the river though I was kind of hoping I could hook into a couple more quality fish but hey we got that one real nice channel cat definitely needed the net for that one a couple more little ones to keep me busy I think I enjoyed just hanging out here on the river the peacefulness just as much as I enjoyed catching those fish so that was a pretty good way to spend the evening I enjoyed it I hope you guys did too thanks for coming along with me I'll see you next time