Pair Net Surprise Catch On Striper Trip

TROPHY NOT WHAT ANGLERS EXPECTED

— When anglers dream, it may be about catching a fish so big it takes two men to land it.

That was no dream for Joel Gabel and Dan Moyer, two fishermen from Bella Vista.

It was real, and happened during a trip on Beaver Lake at the end of May.

Gabel, a striper guide on the lake, and his pal, Moyer, were testing the water in hopes of locating some big striped bass for a guide trip Gabel had coming up.

They’d already caught a couple of respectable stripers while fi shing near Eden’s Bluff, south of Horseshoe Bend park. About midmorning, one of their rods bent to the water like a shark had taken the bait, which was a 10-inch gizzard shad.

Line zipped from the rod and reel.

“Daniel grabbed it and said he was hung up on the bottom,” Gabel said.

When that lake bottom began to move, the pair knew they had something big, hopefully a giant striper.

Moyer held on tight to the bent rod and 25-pound test line that was strained to the limit. Some 30 minutes later, the big fi sh surfaced behind the boat, but it wasn’t a striper.

It was a giant all right, a giant blue catfi sh. Big catfish are one reason for big landing nets.

“It fit into the net OK, but it took both of us to lift it into the boat,” Gabel said.

The guide whipped out a digital fish scale. The display showed a hefty 76 pounds.

That’d be a new state record striper, but not a record blue catfi sh. The state-record blue cat weighed 116 pounds, 12 ounces and was caughtfrom the Mississippi River in August 2001.

The Arkansas record striper was caught from the White River below Beaver Dam by Jeff Fletcher of Eagle Rock, Mo., in 2000.

It weighed a whopping 64 pounds, 8 ounces.

No doubt the blue catfi sh was big. And ugly.

“It was as ugly as the guy who caught it,” Gabel laughed.

The beauty of a big catfi sh is in the eye of the rod holder.

“It was already missing one eye,” Gabel said.

For that reason, and because the big fi sh was pretty well spent, it ended up as fi sh-fry fare.

It’s no surprise Gabel and Moyer caught the big catfi sh with live shad. Blue catfi sh mostly eat other fi sh.

The best baits to catch your own giant-sized blue are sunfish, shad or big minnows.

Blue catfi sh fi nd food mainly by smell, so it’s common to catch them with stink bait, liver or cut bait.

How do you know if that catfish on your stringer is a bona fide blue cat and not a channel catfi sh?

The best way is a check of the anal fin. That’s the long fin on the underside of the catfish close to the tail.

The anal fin of a blue catfish will be straight while the same fin on a channel catfish is more round in shape.

Catch either species and your taste buds are the winner. Both are fi ne eating fish, as is their cousin, the fl athead catfi sh.

That’s especially true when caught from a clear lake like Beaver.

FLIP PUTTHOFF IS OUTDOORS EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER, TWITTER.COM/NWAFLIP.

Outdoor, Pages 6 on 07/12/2012

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