This past week, I joined a couple of great friends for an afternoon/evening of relaxing and filming whitetail deer and the following morning, enjoyed some great summertime blue catfish catching at Lake Tawakoni with my longtime friend guide David Hanson. Let me tell you all about it.
Ryan Fergus, the operator at Wind Point, arranged for us to stay in one of the comfortable cabins on this beautiful 180 acre park. We settled in about mid afternoon and is often the case, I am the designated supplier of ‘vittles’. I had earlier that day prepared some fajitas from the marinated backstraps of a wild hog I had shot a week prior. Some folks have no idea how tasty wild pork can be when the right hog and cooking process is employed. We began our adventure by devouring the pre cooked fajitas as well as the smoked camp ‘baked’ beans I had brought along.
Our goal was to video and use still cameras to capture some great images of the numerous free ranging whitetail deer that roam the park. Our efforts produced some great still shots as well as footage of bucks and doe belly deep in the lake, munching on lily pads. It was interesting to watch the deer dunk their heads beneath the surface, grab a big lily pad and come up chewing! We also placed some Vineyard Max deer attractant out and shot video of deer actually running in to the grape based ‘bait’ once they smelled it from downwind.
We timed our outing to coincide with the full moon last week and Jeff got some spectacular images with his drone of this ‘Blue Moon’ rising in the east and the sun setting in the west. A restful night in the very comfortable cabin at Wind Point Park and we were up plenty early to join catfish guide David Hanson just before sunup.
As we slowly motored toward the area where David has been catching lots of blue catfish, mostly in the 3 to 8 pound range with a frequent bonus “trophy” fish up to 40 pounds, David explained the fishing pattern he is currently on.
“Summer is traditionally the time to catch quick limits of ‘eater’ channel catfish averaging 1 to 2 pounds. Bait a spot in water around 15-20 feet, use good punch bait and a fish fry is almost guaranteed this time of year. There was a time when most fishermen waited until cooler weather to target the larger blue catfish. Granted we don’t enjoy the almost nonstop bite common with channel catfish but at the end of the trip, we often have three or four times the fillets from the larger blue catfish in the cooler.”
By daylight we had arrived at the spot David had been fishing, water less than 10 feet deep with timber, both standing and submerged close by. The Catfish Pro rod and reel combos we were using were strong enough to hold the bigger fish but the rod tip sensitive enough to detect subtle bites. The truth is in this warm water, most blue catfish don’t peck at the bait. Oh, maybe the rod tip will jiggle a time of two but the blues we caught slammed the baits. The trick when fishing with circle hooks is to allow the hook to thread into the corner of the fishes mouth as it swims away. The cardinal sin when fishing with a circle hook is to grab the rod and jerk. The drill is once the rod is bent toward the surface, crank the reel handle quickly and once you feel the pressure of the fish, remove the rod from the rod holder and the fight is on. It’s difficult not to get excited and when the rod bends, grab it and jerk back. This is a natural reaction, especially by someone like me that has used plastic worms for catching bass for so many years!
David prefers small pieces of cut bait (sunfish) this time of year, even for the bigger blues. “I think of it like this, says David, “Even after dining at an all you can eat buffet, back at home if someone walks by with a bag of potato chips, most folks will grab one, they just can’t resist. It’s the same with blue catfish in my opinion. This time of year, the lake is full of bait fish (Shad and sunfish). We’re fishing in areas with lots of bait and when the catfish smells that fresh little piece of cut bait it’s simply more than it can resist.”
The first ‘bite’ of the morning came on a rod next to me. I cranked the reel fast until I felt a fish and it was all I could do to wrench the rod out of the holder. This was a ‘biggun’ and the rod bowed heavily toward the water. The big fish make a hard run toward some standing timber off to the right and the reels drag was working to slow his progress, but to little avail! On minute I was fighting a big fish, we even saw his tail break the surface and it looked like a boat paddle, and the next my line went slack. The fish had obviously wrapped the line around a submerged limb or root and broken the thirty pound test line. How much did he weigh? There was no way to tell but we all guessed over 40 pounds which is not at all uncommon, even in the warm weather months.
We fished until about 10:30 when the sun was beginning to warm things up. Most of the fish weighted between two and eight pounds, perfect eaters. Later in the trip I again felt the power of a bigger fish, this one was not nearly as big as the one I lost but he was a strong fighter that we estimated at around fifteen pounds. We got some great footage for our weekly TV show “A Sportsmans Life” on Carbon TV and YouTube. Back at the dock; Hanson went to work with his fillet knife on a banner catch of summertime blue catfish. Watching Hanson clean fish with a conventional fillet knife is watching a master in action.
To sum it up for all the catfishermen out there, the formula to success is fishing water less than ten feet deep in areas with timber, using pieces of cut bait about the size of a quarter on circle hooks and waiting until that rod bows heavily toward the surface before cranking down on the reel to insure a good hook set. Hanson says this pattern should work well until fall on any lake with a healthy blue catfish population and then, when the cool fronts begin to blow in usually in October, it will be time to target not only the banner catches of good eater blues but ‘trophy time’ as well when the big one turn on in earnest.
For lodging, contact Wind Point Park www.windpointparktx.com. Contact catfish guide David Hanson at 903-268-7391. Listen to Luke’s weekly radio show “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends” on many radio stations and anywhere podcasts are found.
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