I've been able to go catfishing over the past week at Halleck Pond. Monday and this morning was no exception despite the heat after the sun started coming up. Monday morning, i caught 8 catfish on a J-hook and hot dog, weren't really decent sizes, probably 11 - 13", not as big as the ones i caught the week prior and took home to filet and fry. They all went back into the water, but as the day wore on, i kept thinking about the big one lurking out there and maybe i should've kept the 8 decent ones.

Nevertheless, i shot out today to get rid of the last 4 hot dogs i had. The bite was slower today, i didn't need to slowly drag the bait along the bottom, just let it sink and every 2 or 3 min, slowly move it. Caught 9 catfish today, but i changed positions two times as sunfish and bluegill were eating the bait up again. The first one was one of those decent size ones that i caught Monday morning, but i told myself, not this time, i'm keeping you. Shortly after that, i nailed a 4lber, biggest one i've caught out of there. I was tempted to put the decent one back, but i said no. The rest for the next hour or two were smaller and as i said smaller fish were eating up the bait too quickly. I noticed the catfish were kind of cold, not warm like last week, so they must have been in deeper water just rarely coming into the shallower water to feed. So i moved a little deeper and away from the small panfish, a few small catfish that went back into the water, before i hit the big one. This bad boy had to be close to 30" with a good 10 to 13lbs on him. Joggers saw my rod and the splashing and stopped to look as i slowly worked him in. Now i knew better than to use the rod to lift him out of the water, so after he stopped fighting, i had two choices, either lay down flat on the pavement and pick him up with my hands or pull the line up so i could grab him. Since it was a 20lb mono line i felt confident that it would hold. I was wrong, SNAP! The line broke and he went back into the water. I was mad about two things, 1. I was stupid enough not to get down and use my hands to pull him up and 2. That was my last good hook. So i ended up rigging a little bit smaller of a hook and catching a few more small ones, but nothing worth taking home and i never saw that big boy again.

I went over to my gma's house and fileted both catfish and fried them for some lunch. Boy they tasted good. But i still think about that big boy that got away. Now i have to decided whether to get treble hooks or circle hooks for catfishing instead of the j-hooks to increase my hooksets.