Slow Rollin' on the River for Catfish

Slow Rollin' on the River- written by Ted Yates aka Soonerbass



Got an invite from pondboy yesterday askin' if I was up for some drift fishing on the Fox. It had been a while since I had drift fished live bait in a river and I'd never fished the Fox but I am always lookin for an excuse to fish and I figured PB would be a good guide. 
As you can imagine with the drought conditions we have been under, the river was very low, as low as PB had ever seen it at this location. This required a shallow presentation and most of the trip we only had our nightcrawlers set 1-2 feet below our floats.
We got out to the river about 5:30pm and things started out slow but PB got the skunk off the trip with a small channel cat.

We caught several more little guys as we worked our way downriver and PB was able to get a little larger one as well.

We eventually got down to an area where some cooler water was coming into the river and started catching some smallies. Nothing big but still fun on light tackle.


This little guy may be the lightest colored smallie I have ever caught, 

this fish had a very distinct pattern

As we began to slowly wade our way back up river and call it a night, 
I watched my float disappear. As I set the hook I could immediately tell I had a 
bigger fish than what we had been catching. After a good battle I landed this channel cat, 
the biggest of the trip. This fish was a blast to fight on light spinning gear and only 6lb 
test line.

I caught one more nice cat that was slightly smaller than the biggest fish before we decided to call it a night.

In the end we probably caught around a dozen channel catfish and maybe 8 or so smallmouth bass.

All fish were caught and released.

Thanks again for the lesson on drift fishin' PB!
I promise next time I'll try to wade a little faster