Our son and a friend have been wanting to go after a big blue, so we booked a guided fishing trip and made some memories this week at Milford Reservoir in Kansas. Layne caught his biggest at 36.2#, but his friend's first was even bigger...51.5#! Was fun for me to sit back and watch. I caught a 35.5# in a rain storm two days earlier and it was my biggest ever, too. This lake has a 25-40" slot limit, so we kept a few smaller fish for eaters and put all trophy fish back in after pictures to let them grow bigger. Definitely a fishing trip we will remember. Look forward to getting back up there this spring to try again from our boat.

Awesome! I love chasing catfish. Few more weeks and a few degrees higher water temps and we’ll be after them.

Congratulations, memories for sure.

I love the Blue Cat. The slot limit to me is a two edged sword, the lakes get full of large shad eaters. I usually throw anything back over 8 pounds anyway. You just about have to grill the big ones to melt the fat off of the fillets.

Department says the big freeze was tough on our shad stocks. Hoping bait isn’t scarce this year. Nothing better than fresh cut shad for blues.

Cut and live perch works pretty good and stays on the hook better. I did notice a heck of a shad population on Eagle mountain lake day before yesterday.

We always use cut perch when the shad aren’t on the bank. Crappie heads work better than perch but nothing compares to fresh shad. Of course perch sure beats staying at home.

Fresh shad is definitely one of the favorites, but any fresh cut bait seems to work better than other options. We tried a couple of day old heads/cut pieces off fish we caught and filleted the day before and couldn't buy a hit on those. Layne is getting things figured out to be able to throw a bigger bait cast net, so hopefully we can find the shad next time we go out.

Well I'm more into natural bait. I like fresh chicken breast soaked in strawberry kool aid and garlic! :-)

take the cat fish fillets after you skin them put skin side up on wax paper in the freezer for 15/ 20 min. the fat will rise to the top and then fillet it off . makes it a lot better

Haven't heard of that technique before. We have cleaned and eaten a few flatheads up to 40-45#, but haven't ever kept any of the bigger blues.

We eat a lot of blues, easiest way for me to get the fatty red off is to split the filet down the lateral line then take a triangle shaped slice off each half. What’s removed is all the fishy tasting stuff. Hard to explain but if you try it you’ll understand.

But if you have ready access to flatheads I’d say heck with the blues for eating, flatheads are far superior. At least the ones we have around here. Of course they’re far more difficult to catch too.

I agree on the flatheads being very good eating. We will start setting limb lines for them in May/June. Here's a post I shared last summer when the two boys teamed up to put a 45# fish in the kayaks. We released that one after pictures:

Personal Best Flathead from the kayaks last summer