Flathead Catfish Trip E-mail
Written by Chalk Saunders   
Tuesday, 01 November 2011 05:21

Flathead catfish

Went to Bartlett Lake with Greg this weekend to do a little kayak fishing. We started bait fishing, Greg caught most of the bait as I am easily distracted by shiny objects and he kept flashing this bait rod he just built around.

Greg broke out all kinds of new gear for me to try. I got to use a few of his WHISKERFISH rods with an ABU 10000 and a PENN jigmaster. We started fishing for flats around 1pm. Straight away Greg nails a small flat in short order and then his second a short time later. We decided to move to another spot and were fishing again by around 5pm. We both missed a couple of runs. A few hours later I finally hook one a nice 32lb flat he was a scrappy little guy and pulled me around on my kayak banging me into rocks and and everything else he could find. Finally got him boated in about 10 minutes.We missed a few more runs then fell asleep. I wake up to a clicker just slowly clicking away. I miss him but then he decides to give me one more shot, I set the hook and he pulls me out. I fight him for a few minutes and land a nice 52lb flat. He had half the fight of that scrappy 32 but was still very fun

Bartlett lake is just north of phoenix, AZ.
I have at one time or another owned over 40 yaks and find my T100 very comfortable and quite functional for the tight places I am fishing.

Me and Greg 9-23-11 031.JPGMe and Greg 9-23-11 031.JPG


As for details the lake is way down and I like to use up to 5 pound live carp for flathead bait. So we headed way up the river end into the shallows where the smaller carp are hiding. Fished for a few hours and had enough bait to get started cat fishing. Since it was Greg's first trip with me, and he has never been on a yak. I brought a jon boat for him. He is already looking at yaks after this trip, I will probably just loan him a 120. 

have recently switched from 80# powerpro main line to 80# Jerry Brown hollow core spectra. It seems to be more abrasion resistant and has the added benefit of being hollow core. For shock leaders I run 80# Sufix Superior, really I mostly use it for abrasion resistance against the rocks. I used balloons for floats so I could place the bait in heavy rock structure and not get snagged as often. Balloons because I am in a yak and they are easy to carry and still handle large bait. When using big bait and balloons I use VMC circle hooks, its just to much resistance in the water to try and set a hook with the balloon and 5 pound bait.

 

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