A blast on the river

On Sunday morning we went over to Jen's aunt Brenda and uncle Donnie's to watch them fillet catfish, as neither of us have ever learned to deal with fish, which being on the ocean is probably quite a useful skill to learn. If you have never seen a Missouri river Blue catfish, this is something to see! As a young teenager, I kept an aquarium full of fish, including catfish, which were no more than three centimetres long, so to see one of these enormous monsters was quite something. Incidentally, they taste really good too and are similar to the Vietnamese Pangasius that we all seem to eat in Europe.

Jen's cousin Scott had caught them earlier in the morning and invited us out in the evening for a blast up the Missouri river with him, his dog Sammie and his fishing partner Joe. They had a number of lines set up for catching catfish that needed checking and re-baiting. It was a lovely Missouri evening and fantastic to get back on the water, all be it in a motor boat.

On reflection, we were last on the water in September just before we took Jorvik Rose out of the water for the winter. It's been too long so it was really nice to have a couple of hours out.

One set of lines were set over a really deep (30feet+) hole in the river and the line seemed really stuck. Scott and Joe really had to work hard to get the line up and as well as several bent and broken stainless steel hooks, on the end of one the line had snagged a big blue catfish, weighing in at 27lbs (just over 12 KG)!