Home Forums Fishing Freshwater More columbia river cats

The Stubbornness of holding out to buy a boat with the convertible bench seats was worth every penny, and all the deliberation it took.

We are at 38 cats this year so far, last year was 80 for the whole season. But this year we have caught some really big ones. I think we will surpass last years totals right now. I have to be in Africa for my work some of the summer, but we are about 1/2 way there already!




As you can see with the bunk made up and the little RV table it's a sweet setup to watch a movie in great comfort and put the hours in to catch some nice fish.

I have small electric buzzer alarms on the rods. They are really exciting to be watching a movie, or sleeping and hear them go off! It's a great setup for night fishing.

Nice!

Cat'n in style Nice run so far, keep it up, safe travels

Dinner on the boat was great, but the fishing was outstanding!

This past weekend we caught another nice batch. Although not many eaters. Only kept 2 of more then a dozen landed. Had a big hog tangle in the anchor rope at 2 AM and that one broke off. First lost fish of the year!

Biggest fish of the weekend was 15lb 6oz. but we caught 5 over 10 lbs. One was a super cat that Callie had on for 20 minutes or longer. It had to be on the line for probably 5-10 minutes before I started timing it. That beast was just shy of 10 pounds but ripped the line out in 30-40 yard bursts several times. She was getting testy when it would get almost to the net only to rip off another 20 yards and start all over again!

We are using light spinning gear. Mitchell 300 reels, a Mitchell 304 which is 58 years old, and uglystick spinning rods rated for 12lb line. We do also have two Accurate Twin spin #6 reels which are on the high end side and filled with 30lb braided line. Still only on the same 12lb weight uglysticks though.

The Twin spin reels are pretty amazing, the drags are so smooth and feel so good with a big fish! What a difference 50 years of technology makes! Nevertheless, that mitchell 304 with 12lb mono worked just fine on all the cats even over 15lbs.


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