WHEN LINE COUNTS
Come Catch Some Catfish
EDITOR'S
NOTE: Billy Blakely of Tiptonville, Tennessee, manages
Blue Bank Resort on Reelfoot Lake and also chief fishing
guide there. Each day Blakely and the other guides who
work with him on Reelfoot Lake take clients out fishing
for bluegills, crappie, catfish and bass. “We
have to depend on the fishing line we use to help us
be successful and to help our clients to catch fish,”
Blakely explains. “That’s the reason we’ve
all changed over to Mossy Oak Fishing Line. We know
that when a fish takes the bait we can depend on the
Mossy Oak Line to put that fish in the boat.”
This week Blakely will tell us how he and the other
guides at Blue Bank produce large numbers of fish each
day throughout the spring and summer. You may not believe
the catch numbers that Blakely reports, but if you doubt
that he and his other guides can produce as many fish
in a day as they say.
Reelfoot
Lake has large numbers of channel catfish in it. During
the daylight hours you often can catch from 50-100 pounds
of catfish in a day, and then fish at night with Yo-Yos
and take 100-300 pounds of catfish. When we’re
fishing for catfish during daylight hours, I use the
Strike King Dynamite Bites Catfish Bait, an artificial
catfish bait. My two favorite flavors are catalpa and
shad for catfish. I fish with a No. 4/0 Daiichi red
bleeding circle hook. When I rig up, I tie on 18-inches
of 12-pound-test fishing line as a leader from the hook
to a barrel swivel. Above the barrel swivel, I’ll
put a ¼-ounce slip sinker on 20-pound-test main
line. Then I tie the main line onto the other end of
the barrel swivel. The reason I’m fishing with
12-pound-test leader is because I’ll be fishing
straight down in logs, stumps and other debris. If my
hook gets stuck in the trash, or a catfish takes my
line in-between a crack in a log for instance, then
I want to be able to break off the leader without losing
my barrel swivel and my slip sinker.
The catfish in Reelfoot Lake live in logpiles and sunken
and visible downed treetops in the lake, the worst kind
of environment in which to put fishing line. That’s
why we must have a line like Mossy Oak Fishing Line
that’s highly abrasion-resistant and strong and
tough to get those cats out of the wood.
We’ll be fishing in 4-7 feet of water for those
catfish. Our channel cats will average from 2-to 7-pounds
each, but I have caught channel cats here in Reelfoot
that weigh 23- to 24-pounds each. In an average day
of fishing during the daytime, one boat with two fishemen
usually will catch 25-30 catfish, but I have caught
as many as 110 catfish in one day. But you have to remember,
we’re only fishing for 5 to 6 hours to catch that
number of catfish.
To
learn more about Blue Bank Resort, go to www.bluebankresort.com
or call
1-877-258-3226. Blue Bank has a motel, restaurant, guide
service, rental boats, motors, fishing tackle and a
bait shop. You also can visit www.strikeking.com
to learn about the company’s baits for catfish.
For more information about Mossy Oak Fishing Line, go
to www.mossyoakfishing.com.
To learn more about Yo-Yos, go to http://www.rockingaltd.com/mfish.html
or contact Mechanical Fisher Division, P.O. Box 1170,
Diamond City, Arkansas 72630, (870) 422-7715.
TOMORROW: NIGHTTIME FISHING
FOR CATS
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