Last summer my son and I made a trip to the Mississippi River to try for white bass. Well, really we wanted stripers but we pretty well know that would be a miracle. We haven’t seen any at the rocks in years, but, we had hopes for a striper anyway.
So we were on a jetty running flies through the roil with high hopes. I didn’t have my best gear with me because trips to the river are very rough on rods and fly lines. I had heavily weight flies and so I had a TFO 9-weight that I had won in a raffle at the club for a $1. The reel was a TFO, heavy reel that used to be good but the drag was stuck on a medium braking setting. My flyline was Orvis Ignitor which has a short head and was good for the Belgian roll cast I was using to constantly drop the fly into the roil.
We had caught a few, very few white bass on Clousers. I decided to fish very close to the rocks using the heaviest fly I had. I put on a black wooly bugger I had tied with wrapped lead and a brass cone. The fly had a bunny tail which was pretty long. I was just Belgian rolling the fly through the rocks one cast after another, never really letting line out or stripping much.
I would drop the fly in above the white water and letting it tumble down the rocks with slack to make it drop deep and close to the rocks. Suddenly I felt a jolt and when I came tight, it was on.! I figured the fish must have been a catfish because it did not make a run but preferred to just pull down and try to lose me in the rocks. Well, by having a saltwater leader and 9 wt that I didn’t mind breaking, I was able to really put some pressure on.
The result was a really nice flathead catfish. My son and wife weighed it on two separate bathroom scales and they both came to 22lbs. Which of course would have been a state record on flyrod, but that’s just not my thing. He was delicious!
And here is Chris holding my fish. Actually his mustache is way more impressive than the fish!
"Samurai" Fly Shop 