Chris Rolph with his Ohio Record Blue Catfish.

Now that is a pretty Catfish, 96 pounds of blue catfish to be exact. How would you like to feel the tug on you line when you set the hook on that guy!

This fish is the new state record Blue Catfish for Ohio, it has been certified by the Outdoor Writers of Ohio State Record Fish Committee.

Chris Rolph, of Williamsburg, was fishing for catfish from a boat on the Ohio River near Cincinnati in the early morning hours of Thursday, June 11, when he hooked and landed a 54-1/2 inch blue catfish with a 36 inch girth weighing 96 pounds.

Upon landing the fish after a 30 minute battle, his fishing partner that night, Jon Owens, of Amelia, knew they had just boated a new state record catfish and the pair immediately headed back to Schmidt Field ramp from where they had launched. Later that morning Rolph, who kept the fish alive in a large aerated stock tank, had the fish weighed on certified scales at Bethel Feed and Supply.

Rolph’s record blue catfish was caught using cut skip jack for bait at approximately 12:45 a.m. Together the fishermen caught five small catfish before hooking the state record.

Rolph wanted to release the fish unharmed, therefore special arrangements were made to have the fish examined and photographed that morning by the chairman of the OWO State Record Fish Committee. Afterwards the record blue catfish was safely released into a large farm pond.

Rolph’s blue catfish replaces the previous record held by Keith Setty from Lynchburg, who caught a 57 pound, 3.2 ounce blue catfish from the tailwaters of Meldahl Dam on the Ohio River.

Joint studies conducted by the Ohio Division of Wildlife and Kentucky Fish and Wildlife found blue catfish populations in the lower Ohio River were substantial enough to warrant down listing the species from “endangered” to species of special concern.

Down listing the blue catfish opened up sport fishing opportunities for anglers on the Ohio River, resulting in the fish being added to the state record fish list by the Outdoor Writers of Ohio in 2008.

Ohio Division of Wildlife fisheries biologist Doug Maloney, at Wildlife District Five, identified Rolph’s catch as a blue catfish. Blue catfish is the largest growing catfish in the Ohio River often weighing in excess of 100 pounds. The Kentucky state record blue catfish is 104 pounds and was also caught from the Ohio River.

Ohio state record fish are certified by the Outdoor Writers of Ohio State Record Fish Committee. Assisting in the process is fisheries biologist with the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

Who will catch the next record fish? How big will it be, there are some giant catfish out there, it’s just a matter of being prepared when the oppurtunity hits. Good Luck and Tight Lines, Gary

OK, I know this report is out of order but I am backtracking to cover this week. I spent the week at an FFA camp in Georgia with 576 middle school and high school students. It was really hot but we had a great time. There are 2 lakes at this camp. One is very large with all kinds of fish and the other is a couple of acre catfish-bream pond with a few bass. My mission at camp is to get these kids fishing. Several students with us are Gone Fishin Club members and love to fish. I drive my van loaded with rods and reels, breambusters, tackle boxes full of hooks, weights, lines etc. so everybody can fish. We have people who fish all the time to kids who have never caught a fish here. Most have caught small fish before but not 4 or 5 pound catfish. I’ts really challenging and fun to coach these kids on how catch these fish. First I start most of them off catching bream for our bait supply. After they have caught a few bream we let them put out a catfish rod with a 2-4″ bream under a 2″ float. Now they are watching that float bob around, then the bobber starts moving a little faster. As it is gaining speed I tell them to start taking up the slack and tighten up the line to the bobber. When the bobber plunges and dissapears I pull back hard on the rod, you should see their faces when that fish pulls the rod back forward. Then they get that face of determination as they start wrestling in the fish. Two middle school girls formed a teanm to gang up on the fish, whenever one would hook one the other would get down close to the waters edge to yank it out of the water as it came close. This camp was about leadership but I think thses kids learned some good team work skills too.

How many fish did we catch, wow!

Monday we caught some really nice big bream, maybe 15, and a good cats, maybe 5 or 6.

Tuesday we caught 30 or 40 small to medium bream and 25 – 30 good cats.

Wednesday was the day, we caught 70-80 bream and hammered the catfish, 30 plus good one with 10 or so 3-5 pounders.

Thursday was slow in the morning, live bream for bait wasn’t working, one kid switched to cut bait and caught about 7 before lunch. We had one student in a wheelchair come down to the lake. I set him up on breambuster and he caught several bream, then we put him on some stinkbait and he caught his first catfish.
He had to leave before the bigger ones started biting but he was happy with his first catfish. By Thursday 2 of the kids who were fishing earlier in the week had stepped up and were helping me bait hooks, remove fish, and untangle lines. So their was some leadership training at the lake after all. I know unhooking fish may seem elementary but last year I had a kid who said he knew how to unhook a catfish and the next thing I knew he had a fin stuck all the way through his hand.
I had to cut it off and pull it through because these fins are barbed like fish hooks and don’t go backwards easily.

After lunch we moved to the sunny side of the lake and things picked up, the bigger catfish were nailing the bream live or cut it didn’t matter. We would hook bait up, cast it out and try to hand it to somebody before the fish hit, it was awesome! Also by Thursday we had most of these kids casting their own rigs, now you are thinking big deal right. Well these bream rigs were set at 7-8′ deep so your bobber was at the rod tip and if you are a 5′ tall girl your bream is laying on the ground waiting for take-off, so yes I was proud when some of these kids casted better than me in 4 days.

Friday we got up early and headed back home, passing the catfish hole on our departure. All in all we had a great week and a great time at FFA-FCCLA camp.

Oh, did I mention that we also built a 10′ long john boat out of cardboard and 2 rolls of duct tape and three kids paddled it around the lake, hmm, it was fun!

Looking for something to do, take a kid fishing!!!

Hope you enjoyed my recount of camp. Tight Lines, Gary

Well I managed to squeeze a little fishing time in this week.

Monday I went to a little private pond to see if the catfish were biting. Tried the catawba worms and got a few nibbles but no real strikes. Tried the bream and caught a few small ones on my breambuster pole, they were biting slow too, it was like 91 degrees. Hooked one catfish around 4 pounds on my breambuster when I was trying to catch a bream, I played him a little and tried to bank him but he straightened the hook and got off. Note here: I normally use nothing but Gamakatsu hooks but I love the size 10 hooks for small breaming and can’t find a U.S. source for these #10 G09205 Aberdeen hooks or the size 12 G09204 Aberdeen hooks. If anyone knows where I can order these please let me know, this other brand of hooks just ain’t no Gamakatsu.Tried the small bream live hooked and got 2 cats under the dock then cast out a bream head and the catfish finally came to life a little. Caught 5 good eating size catfish and we caled it a morning and headed for a late lunch.

Tuesday I took my daughter and wife and we went to a local public lake to catch some bream. We went around 7:30 as they are usualy biting in the late afternoon. They were biting slow too. My daughter managed to find a spot of small to medium bream and caught 7 or 8. My wife caught a couple and between baiting hooks, removing fish and replacing line on the breambusters I caught a total of 1/2. A half you say??? Well, while I was baiting another hook I asked my daughter to hold both rods and she hooked a fish on my rod, in our family you get a half fish credit if it’s on your rod.

Friday it was a scorcher, at 97 degrees here it was really hot! At around 6:30 my buddy and I decided to try a little pond and see if they were biting, armed with my usual breambuster, red wigglers and a tube of crickets we headed for the lake. When we arrived it was pretty grown up. As I approached the dock a large moccasin was laying there, he went off into the bushes and after making lots of noise we stepped onto the dock. I found the bream anxious to bite, one after they other they hit the crickets. After I caught over 50 nice bream and my buddy caught several bass we decided to get out of there before it got dark. I made it home in time to go see X-Men Origins: Wolverine with the family.

Some friends of mine fishing in Canada did very good this week on the pike also.

Look for next weeks report, I hope to get in a little salt water and Santee fishing next week.

Tight Lines,
Gary

Where has the time gone– mines Gone Fishin. Made a few trips to Santee with Dewayne Proffit after catfish and then to J. Percy Preist after so bass, only caught like 50 that day then just all over after bream, catfish, bass, you name it and we are fishing for it. I will get better as the summer rolls out, look for Alaska pics in August.

Happy Valentine’s Day Dear,
“Hey, Honey, look what I got you for Valentine’s Day!”
You’re just gonna love this mounted over the fireplace,
anyway chocolate and roses are overrated.

Tom Boise’s wife must be one understanding woman, because what he came home with
on the afternoon of Saturday February 14th was not a dozen roses and a box of chocolates,
but rather a potential new world-record tiger muskie.

The big fish officially weighed 27 pounds, 5 ounces, measuring 45.5 inches in length
and 22.5 inches in girth. Caught on an ice fishing tip-up from Otisco Lake in central New York,
the fish was so large it was hauled off the ice on a child’s plastic sled. A tiger muskie is a hybrid,
a cross between a northern pike and a muskellunge.

“It’s not an official record quite yet,” said Emmett Brown, executive director of the
Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame in Hayward, Wis., “but if everything checks out as reported,
the fish will be the new world-record for a tiger muskie caught on an ice tip-up,
besting the old tip-up record by five ounces.”

The Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame also recognizes world records for tiger muskie in
two other categories: all-tackle (current record 51 pounds, 3 ounces), and ice fishing
with rod and reel (current record 31 pounds, 4 ounces). The organization keeps records
on more than 125 species of freshwater game fish.

Boise, of Lakeland, N.Y., started fishing about 6:30 a.m. on February 14, but didn’t hook
the big muskie until 1:15 p.m. “I knew it was a big fish when I set the hook,” said Boise.
He fought the fish for half an hour before tiring it enough that he could work its nose into
the nine-inch ice hole where a buddy gaffed the fish and lifted it onto the ice.

“It was so big, for a few seconds we just stared at it in silence,” said Boise.
“But then the whooping, hollering, and high-fives started.”

Boise eventually calmed down enough to begin telephoning other fishermen
on the lake to spread the news, one of which realized the fish could be a new world record.
“He advised me that if the fish was really as big as I said it was, to have it weighed on a
certified scales right away,” said Boise. “So I did.”

This big tiger was caught using a five-inch, live shiner minnow on a #4 hook.
Having fished the lake many times before, Boise was prepared for big fish with a
35-pound test main line tipped with a 20-pound test fluorocarbon leader.

Who’s ready to go ice fishing?

Happy Fishing, Gary

Thomas Reed and Brian McKenyon of Kill Buck were just going ice fishing like any other time, only this time was going to be a little different. Little did they know this would be the day Reed would set the new New York Record for a Walleye.

When  they walked out onto the ice on Mystic Lake in Cattaraugus County and cut their fishing holes, I doubt either angler thought that one of them was about to become the new owner of the New York state record for walleyes.

But when Reed pulled it up and flipped it onto the ice, I guarantee you they were both smiling. The walleye tipped the official scales at 16 pounds, nine ounces — topping the existing record set in 1994 by two ounces — and DEC biologists estimated the fish to be over 20 years old.

Here is Reed’s fish tale:

Tom and Brian cut the holes and set up their minnow-baited tip-ups just before daybreak, and didn’t have a bite until about 10:30 a.m., when Tom’s tip-up flag popped up. But when Tom got to the tip-up, the fish had already run off with the bait, leaving him with an empty hook.

Putting on another bait, he lowered it back into the water, and what he believes was the same fish grabbed it and took off again. Only this time, Tom’s hookset was solid. At first, he thought he had a bass, but when the fish finally got near the hole, with Brian’s assistance, he grabbed it by the gills and flipped it on the ice. McKenyon immediately told him that he believed it was a state record. He was right, and it’s now safely at the taxidermist’s. It was the only fish they caught that day.

Speaking of walleyes, back here in the area at Dave’s Bait, there were reports of a nice 25-inch ’eye taken at the Great Sacandaga Lake by Mike Bailey of Northville that tipped the scales at 4 1⁄2 pounds. He caught the fish in the north end of the lake on a medium-sized shiner, in about 10 feet of water. The north end seems to be where most of the action is right now.

The largest northern pike reported there was taken by Vern Duelsler, also of Northville. His trophy measured 39 1⁄2 inches and was estimated to weigh about 18 pounds. He was fishing tip-ups in eight feet of water with large live bait down near the bottom.

The smallmouth bass are alive and well at Sacandaga, but they’re out of season. A pair of anglers from downstate who rented a channel-edge shanty from Dave’s caught and released at least 30 smallies throughout the day, a number of which were in the 20-plus-inch category.

But in general, the angling has been slow on Sacandaga, something local fishermen are blaming on the water draw down that has been going on for a while now. I was told it went down six feet in just one day. Ice anglers should move out into the deeper waters for the best chance for fishing success.

Two recent tournaments on the Great Sacandaga saw some nice fish checked in. The 701 Fish & Game Club attracted 71 entries. The top three walleye catches were James Dibble of Broadalbin, 19 1⁄2 inches; David Foster of Hope, 18 1⁄2 inches; and Lorne Brown of Burnt Hills, 18 inches. Garrison DeRocker of Broadalbin and Grayson Fonda of Mayfield tied, each with a 36-inch northern pike, and took the top two spots in that division, while Dibble was third with his 27 1⁄2-inch fish. Dibble also won the perch division with a 13 1⁄4-inch catch.

The annual Fish House Fish & Game Club’s two-day event attracted 196 anglers. Leading the way in the walleye division was Pete Geelan of Broadalbin with a six-pound, 51⁄2-ounce ’eye that meas­ured 27 1⁄2 inches. Geelan won the walleye category last year in this event. Second place went to Jesse Walter of Broadalbin with a four-pound, 15-ouncer, followed by Ira Cromling III of Broadalbin with his four-pound, nine-ounce catch.

Broadalbin angler Matthew Bunker’s 12-pound, 15-ounce pike took first place in that category, followed by Terry Graudons of Mayfield with a 12-pound, two-ounce catch. Third place went to Matt Cornell of Broadalbin with an 11-pound, 11-ounce pike.

Big perch honors of the day went to Jason Savoie of Broadalbin with a one-pound, 10-ounce catch. Mike Kaz­laukas of Broadalbin caught the only trout of the day, a two-pound, nine-ouncer.

I didn’t receive any information about the Mayfield Lake ice fishing tournament last weekend, but I heard there were quite a few ang­lers on the lake, and pickerel were biting lake-wide.

On Round Lake, there’s been plenty of activity, and the anglers I spoke with there said they were catching a variety of fish. The pike were running in the mid-20-inch size, and most of them were setting off flags in the back (east) of the lake. Live bait in six to eight feet of water in and around the weeds will get you the most action. The panfishing there seems to be the most productive just off the shore along Route 9 in 10 feet of water. Jigging with teardrop jigs tipped with grubs will get bluegills, perch and sometimes crappies. There was a rumor of a lost 40-plus-inch tiger muskie in the deeper water in the south end of the lake.

Lake Lonely big pike action was slow, but there is still a good opportunity to hook up with a nice set of teeth if you stay in the north end of the lake in about 10 feet of water.

Put a big bait down right on the bottom beneath a tip-up, and just in case, set another right in the weeds in four to five feet. They’re cruising, and you never know. If you can find an eight- 10-foot weed edge on the west side of the lake, jigging with tiny tubes or teardrop jigs tipped with grubs can produce some nice panfish. Bill Parry of the Lake Lonely Boat Livery did well there, pulling up a few bluegills and one 14 1⁄2-inch perch.

Speaking of perch, three gener­ations of Praticos had quite a day with the Lake George perch pop­ulation. The Glenville ice-angling trio of Tom Sr., 84, Tom Jr. and David were busy all day jigging up perch. They were fishing in various bays in the Southern Basin of the lake in 30 feet of water using colorful size 8 jigs tipped with grubs. This is an annual event for the Pratico family.

Reports received from Lake George are that the lake trout are still down in 80-plus feet of water, and are favoring small suckers. Much of the action is lake-wide in both the Northern and Southern basins. Average size of the lakers is 23 to 27 inches, with one 35-inch laker said to have been pulled through the ice around the Point of Tongue.

Amsterdam ice anglers Mike Aur­iemma and John Loucks had a good day fishing on Otsego Lake. Mike landed a 22-inch, 41⁄2-pound brown trout fishing in 26 feet of water with a spot tail chub set 12 feet beneath the ice. Ross’ Bait reports that a number of his bait customers have been talking about good lake trout fishing all season in this lake, and a number of the fish have been in the 30-plus-inch range. Otsego Lake might be worth the ride.

The bite at Saratoga Lake has also slowed considerably in the last week, and the anglers who competed in the Saratoga Tackle’s tournament there this weekend definitely found that out. The biggest walleye was a 5.26-pound fish caught by George Brown of Sar­atoga Springs, who received $91. Henry Ostrander of Saratoga Springs was second ($45) with his 4.70-pound ’eye, and Keith Crounse of Voorheesville was third ($30) with a 3.96-pounder.

Only one northern pike came to the scales in this event, and it was a 7.34-pounder caught by Peter Rogers of Hudson. He received $166. In the perch category, Rogers was again on top with a 1.28-pound fish worth $91. John Rychek of Still­water was second with a 1.12-pound perch, and Mike Moon of Ballston Lake was third with a .80-pound catch. Second and third returned $45 and $30, respectively.

The accumulated pickerel award winner ($70) was Rogers with a five-fish limit totaling 11.12 pounds.

These numbers and weights are unusual for this lake, especially for the pickerel that are usually setting off flags all over the lake, all day. Panfishing anglers have told me that the fish they are taking are down deep, and most of them are over sunken weedbeds. If you drop a colorful tiny jighead tipped with a grub or use a tip-up with small minnow down just above the weeds, you should get enough for supper.

Well What Are You Waiting For, The Next Record Fish Is Out There Waiting For Somebody To Come Catch It!!!

Happy Hookin’ and Good Luck,  Gary

This is Gone Fishin Club members Gary Turner, Stacy Fleming, Tommy Bowen and Capt. Dewayne Proffit catching blue catfish on the Santee Cooper Resevoir in January.

Hope you enjoy our video and Happy Fishin’, Gary

I love fishing for catfish! I fish Santee Cooper in South Carolina a good bit.

My favorites baits are as follows:

For Channel cats I prefer to use my homemade concoctions or Magic Baits night crawler flavor.

For Blues I like cut bait- gizzard shad, threadfin shad and eel. Cut into small to good size chunks depending on your quarry. You can also slice the sides to give more scent.

Gone Fishin Club Member Gary Turner with a Nice Flathead Catfish

For Flatheads I only use live baits, I prefer large live baits when I can get them. Check your state regs to make sure what is legal in your state.

Large flatheads will eat other fish up to 10 pounds. So if you think your bait is to big, think again. The Best baits are always indigenous to the waters you are fishing. Gizzard shad, theadfin shad, yellow perch, bream, crappie, catfish, white perch, suckers, and eels all make great flathead baits.

For more information on Catfishing check out Catfishing Products

Happy Catfishing Gary Turner