A unique website dedicated to fishing information from Florida's Northern Big Bend. This includes the area from the Econfina River west to the Apalachicola River
Use this area to post freshwater fishing reports from the area lakes and rivers. Please try to include relevant information such as:
Location, date, time, water conditions, weather conditions, baits, techniques, species caught, etc.
Headed down to lake talquin tomorrow night to do some catfishin, taking JT51, Butch and Trouttrent with me. Its going to feel like we are ice fishin, ain`t sure JT51 can handle 20 degrees but I respect him for trying. Will follow up with a report if my fingers don`t get frostbite.
I got down to High Bluff about 2:30 pontoon boat in tow.Onekeeper and Tommy were already there munching on Onion dip with lowfat saffron crackers. Onekeeper had all the catfish lines made up and sitting real pretty in a five gallon bucket.
We needed 3 people to run the boat,set the lines and assist. Tommy couldn't leave the camp because of the hobo that was hanging around.
Onekeeper put in a call to Troutrent to see if he could leave work early and help us. He was more than eager to do so since his boss(Tommy) was already there.
Shortly Troutrent shows up,we load the boat and off we go. Heading to our first group of trees to tie lines Onekeeper mentions to Troutrent to be careful with the bucket of lines. If they get bumped they become too tangled to use and we are losing daylight.
We get 3 hooks out and come 'round a tree when Troutrent says go wide right because of a submerged stump he knows about.
Apparently the stump moved wide right also,we nailed it dead center. OOPS, there go the hooks and lines all over the floor. OOPS,there goes Onekeeper over the bow railing. OOPS, there goes Troutrent over the front pedestal seat. OOPS, there goes my beer.
Fortunately Onekeeper held fast to the bow rail and Troutrent was stopped from going over by the pedestal seat. Unfortunately all my beer spilled and all the linesets became grossly entangled.
Onekeeper gets on the phone to his other half and asked her to look on the backporch get the catfish line and drive it down to him. She told him............... well lets just say she did not bring the line.
Troutrent begins cutting off all the hooks and lead to salvage the line we had so we could start over.
By the time we reach our next destination he has lines ready to be tied. Onekeeper starts tying lines,we back the boat out,FISH ON. We retrieve that nice channel cat rebait and move to the next limb. Same thing FISH ON and on and on,etc.
We could hardly get the lines out before we had nice big catfish.
While all this was gouing on Tommy,Talley,John,Josh and Randall were all back at the camp sitting by a really big fire and prepping dinner.
When we get back from the first run we are greated with cold beer,deep fried chicken,coleslaw and cheese grits.YUM YUM.Compliments of Tommy Thompson of the famous Thompson Hamburger family.
On that run we brought in 12 catfish just trying to set the hooks out.
After we eat,out we go again. With 33 hooks out we bring back another 27 catfish. Some hooks had been straightened out and fish lost. All are re baited,then back to the camp for cold chicken,hot catfish and cold beer.
We made one final run after the 2nd snack to get anymore fish off the lines and render the lines safe.
We finished up with a total of 67 catfish. The smallest weighing 2 pounds the largest at 7 pounds. Most of them channel cats the others blue cats.
And yes. We did talk about most of you while we were there.