Caught this nice catfish

[Hillbillybone]

Last spring i caught this really nice catfish. It was 30 1/2 inches, and 14 pounds. I caught it at the Independence Dam in Defiance, Ohio. Around where I live, that's a NICE sized catfish. When I pulled it in, everyone was like WOW, 2 people i didn't even know took my picture. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

[Zulu]

Hillbillybone,
Nice cat!!  You got me beat.  My biggest was 13 pounds.  What did you catch it on?  I caught mine on a dead shad about 3" long.
Zulu

[Hillbillybone]

Thanks!:). I caught this monster on a nightcrawler.

[kyelkhunter3006]

Awesome catch!  Got me beat for the year so far.

Every fish eats worms, I don't care what it is or how big it is.  Caught a 7lb largemouth a couple years ago on a wad of crawlers I had tossed out hoping for a channel cat.  People didn't believe me when I told them I got it on worms.

[Graybeard]

I've never weighed a fish before and will soon be 65 years old. That's gonna change this year tho as I bought a digital scale from Cabela's so I can see what the fish coming out of my pond this year actually weigh rather than just guessing at the weight.

I have at least 30 perhaps more catalpa trees scattered around the pond area so once the worms begin on them there is no reason to not have good fish bait the rest of the season. Yup every fish I've ever fished for will take a worm of most any type.

[Zulu]

Graybeard,
Having a good scale will be fun.  Before you weigh a fish, try to guess the weight.  It has been my experience that most folks heft a fish in their hands and guess "that's about 8 lbs".  Then weigh it and it's really 5 lbs.   I have never seen anyone under guess the weight
Zulu

[dukkillr]

I hope you have better luck with that Cabelas digital scale than I did.  I bought one to measure the big fish when bowfishing and it was crap.  I took it back and traded for a simple analog scale, also a Cabelas product.

[Zulu]

I have a Rapala brand.  I think it works great!
Zulu

[Catfish]

I think that`s alittle bigger than any I have in my pond now. Mine ran 7 1/2 to 10 lbs. last year. There probly 35 to 40 of them in there yet and I`m going to try to get most of them out this year and start a new crop. They sure are fun to catch aren`t they. 

[Graybeard]

I'd be surprised to find any fish in my pond that goes over 4 pounds this year tho by the end of summer some of the bass and catfish might. We caught several catfish last year I guesstimated at 2.5-3 pounds at least. I saw at least a couple of bass I felt might be close to that as well but we sure didn't catch either of them.

I think this is the pond's third summer if I recall correctly since it was stocked. It was dug in August and left to fill with rain water over the winter. There is a watershed of perhaps ten to fifteen acres that drains thru it. The pond is about three quarters of an acre.

It was stocked in March-April the year after it was dug with tiny bream and bass spawned that year at the state fish hatchery and with 4"-6" catfish a bit later that spring. That summer the water level dropped dangerously low and I did lose some fish to the low water conditions. It took it until almost the first of the following year to completely refill. Since then the water has remained high enough for me to feel pretty good about it. Last summer it did drop perhaps 24"-30" at one point but only for a month or so and then it refilled with just one big rain.

At full pool I have areas dthat vary from as little as a foot or so of water up to as much as 10'-12' with most of it being at least 4' to 6' and there is almost half the surface area that is at least 8' or more deep at full pool. I am concerned that if we have another drought of the type we had a few years back that I will lose a lot of fish to it as they are now getting decent size to them and there are far too many to survive if it were ever to again drop to the level it did that first summer after it filled over the previous winter.

We've underfished it both summers that it has had a fishable population and we really need to take out a lot of fish this year. The state guys told me we should remove at least 75 pounds each year and we've likely not taken out much over 50 pounds total so far so we're way behind and need to eat more fish this year.