Chad Holbrook, a fisheries biologist for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources who oversees the Santee Cooper lakes, said biologists use winter gill-net sampling to assess blue catfish populations and, the data shows increasing catch rates from 2016 through 2018. […]
A 58-pound channel catfish was caught from Lake Moultrie in 1964, setting state and world records that still stand today. While the Santee Cooper lakes provide excellent fishing for numbers of channel catfish, the sizes are no longer extreme and are not typically considered trophy size, even for channel catfish. […]
Anglers from throughout the Carolinas make an annual trek to the Santee Cooper lakes in search of trophy catfish, and these enormous cats make it worth the trouble with explosive bites and drag-screaming surges. […]
It’s a skiff. It’s a dinghy. It’s a tender. It’s a paddleboard. It’s a BOTE … in a bag. Meet the Rover AeroBOTE, the most-portable paddle skiff on the market. It goes from travel bag to BOTE and back again, easy to store, tags along on any adventure, and stands up to the toughest tests on any waterway — and even baggage claim. […]
Catching Pee Dee River catfish from kayaks is fun and productive. […]
Bobby Winters is a 23-year-old catfish and striper guide on the Santee Cooper lakes who has a youthful passion for catching fish. We were fishing on a hot, summer day, and he’d targeted an area with undulating bottom contours for drift-fishing. We had been drifting only a short while when one of his nine rods bowed over.
The 2014 Santee Cooper blue catfish law that took effect on April 1, 2015, with creel and size limits designed to protect the resource, has been repealed because of an undiscovered “sunset” clause place in the bill by the S.C. General Assembly. […]
Tyler Barnes of Pikeville, NC and his fiance Emily Howell boated a 68-pound blue catfish on July 30, which put them in first place in the annual EZ Bait and Tackle Store’s two-month long catch-and-release catfish tournament. […]
Summer does not have to mean a decline in fishing potential — especially for blue catfish. According to guide Wes Jordan of Creedmoor, N.C., blues will be actively feeding throughout Kerr Lake, aka Buggs Island, but their depth range will run the gamut, and an angler wanting to load up will have to cover the water column. […]
The summer heat hasn’t stopped Lake Norman anglers from catching plenty of catfish. […]
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