Big Blue Bite

Although other Pee Dee/Yadkin lakes have better reputations, one veteran catfish angler likes Blewett Falls for big blues.

Sunset promised cooling conditions as Randy Willard pulled his truck off a dirt road into what served as a parking lot at the Wildlife Commission ramp downstream from Blewett Falls Dam. Superheated dust devils swirled in the pickup’s wake as the boat trailer bounced across boulder tops and ditches sun-dried hard as terra cotta, scoured between the boulders by thunderstorm runoff into the red clay soil.

“It’s a shame they don’t take better care of the ramp,” Willard said. “But if they did, I suppose more people would want to launch their boats from here.”

Willard surveyed a low area at the end of the ramp that had recently been scooped out by a backhoe. He pronounced the attempt to provide low-water access to be ineffective. He couldn’t launch his aluminum john boat.

“It’s too shallow,” he said. “It’s good to come down here when it’s shallow though. See those boulders out there in the river channel? If you can see them when the water is low, you get an idea of how to go around them when the water is high enough to fish. The power plant isn’t generating electricity today. When they do, the river comes up and it’s one of the best places to fish.”

Willard checked the metal plate attached to the bottom of the lower unit of his outboard. He thought a bad jar might have made it dig into dirt.

“Everyone who fishes at Blewett Falls Lake and in the Pee Dee River upstream and downstream of the lake a lot uses these plates,” he said. “There are rocks and boulders everywhere. The only way to learn where you can go safely is to get out there and go slow. Watch the water level, and you learn where you can go when it’s high and when it’s low.”

Willard examined the tiny graveyard for which the ramp is named. While Willard called it the old ferry landing ramp, WRC named it Blewett’s Grave Landing. The name on the single gravestone was Amey Blewett. Sitting on a bluff overlooking the parking lot and ramp, it was evident the grave had been there long before the dam was built a half-mile upstream.

Where the Pee Dee had been a wild river with waterfalls in Amey’s day, it’s now impounded for turning the turbines of a hydroelectric power generating facility.

Reluctantly, Willard left his favorite catfish haunt.

Discretion is the better part of valor, whether in retreating from a one-sided battle or from the certain defeat of an outboard motor in a river showing more rocks than water.

Willard drove north along the eastern shoreline of the Pee Dee River and Blewett Falls Lake along Blewett Falls Road, Ford Hill Road and Grassy Island Road and launched his boat at the WRC’s Grassy Island access area.

He navigated Mountain Island Creek to the main channel of the Pee Dee River. From there he headed northward, missing rocks in the Pee Dee River that sometimes he saw, sometimes were submerged. It was evident he’d spent a lot of time on these waters.

Willard is a conductor for CSX Railroad who lives at Hamlet and fishes or hunts close to home every chance he gets. He especially likes fishing for giant catfish.

“We call the river channel the ‘Thoroughfare,’ ” he said. “Sometime you can see big blues rolling in the Thoroughfare. I catch them beside the islands, along the drop-offs and at the stumpy places. They like to stay anywhere there’s cover.”

Willard found a quiet cove out of the river current. He rigged some float rigs, baited them with crickets and set about catching some catfish bait.

“I also use spinners to catch bream,” he said. “But when it’s hot in the summer, you fill the live well faster if you use a live cricket.”

He caught a few fish before sunset then decided to negotiate the river channel back downstream to Blewett Falls Lake before it became too dark to see. He needed more bait, so he dropped his trolling motor and searched the water for the telltale flip of a gizzard shad.

A few casts of his cast net proved fruitless. So he turned on his depth-finder while circling a cove.

“The water is cooler in the coves with feeder springs,” he said. “There are always a few shad in them.”

Willard spotted some shad 5 feet beneath the surface and made several casts with the net. While he didn’t fill the live well with bait, he caught enough to head farther downstream to his favorite catfish holes.

“I always have some frozen shad along, especially in summer,” he said. “You can get skunked catching bait, and that’s the best way I know to get skunked catching catfish.”

He stopped the boat about 1 mile north of the dam. The lake is only 3-miles long, so it was a short ride. He eased the boat quietly into an area that had tree stumps poking above the surface across an acre of water near the shoreline.

He caught a bluegill from the live well and inserted the point of an 8/0 circle hook into the baitfish just below the dorsal fin. The hook was rigged on a Carolina rig with a 2-ounce egg sinker. He used bait-casting outfits — 7-foot heavy-action Eagle Claw live-bait rods saltwater anglers use for catching king mackerel and Garcia 6500 reels — to cast the baits from four corners of the boat.

“You want to get in here quietly before dark to give it a chance to quiet down before the catfish start moving,” he said. “You don’t want to drop stuff in the boat or bang the boat into the stumps. You can catch several blues from one spot because they school around a lot after dark. But flathead catfish are territorial. You might only catch one big flathead from a fishing spot.”

While Willard uses float rigs and bottom rigs, he prefers bottom rigs at the stumpy areas after dark. A frisky baitfish like a live bream can move a float into snags and stumps in the dark.

As darkness fell, the lake quieted. A few mosquitoes whined. A fisherman walked from the woods to fish a nearby bank. While the bank fishermen caught a small catfish, Willard’s baits became exhausted trying to drag the egg sinkers across the bottom. But with no hungry catfish around to eat them, Willard pulled up his anchor after 45 minutes.

“I’m not going to wait long in one spot for the fish to bite,” he said. “I caught some here a couple of days ago, and there should be some here. But they aren’t biting so we’ll move to another spot.”

Willard started the boat’s motor and headed upstream into one of the lake’s feeder creeks. He switched on the depth-finder and moved slowly along with his face illuminated by the screen.

“Sometimes you see catfish swimming above the bottom,” he said. “But that’s rare. You might see some bait along the bottom, and that’s a good sign. There’s a drop-off right along here, and I’ve already seen some bait on the screen so we’ll anchor upwind of the drop-off and let the boat swing over it.”

Blewett Falls Lake has drop-offs as deep as 28 feet. But Willard said any hole that drops from 5 feet of water to 12 or 15 feet is an excellent place to fish. He finds these drop-offs along the points or in the feeder creek coves.

He switched off the motor and all lights except the white anchor light. A large gathering was having a party on the shoreline a quarter-mile away.

“Sometimes people camp out along the shore and cast a few lines for catfish,” he said. “You might catch a catfish anywhere in this lake. I think it’s one of the most unknown and underrated catfish lakes in the state. We haven’t seen another catfishermen in a boat tonight. There are a few people who guide in this area, but most people head upriver to Badin Lake or Lake Tillery because they have better reputations for producing big catfish.

“This lake is smaller and it’s rocky, but it has the same fish, and I think they can grow larger because there’s less fishing pressure. I’m sure there are state record catfish in Blewett Falls Lake.”

Willard kept his spotlight near the bottom of the boat while he baited his hooks with cut shad and live shad. He doesn’t like shadows on the water because they may spook fish. Still, he does use a spotlight to land his fish.

“You have to use a light to get a catfish in the net,” he said. “I fish with 30-pound high-visibility monofilament lines because you can see them while you’re landing the fish. It doesn’t take much light to make them glow. But other than that, I don’t like to have any lights waving around.”

After he cast four lines and set the rods in holders, all was quiet except for the music and laughter of the partying crowd.

“Those parties will go on all night,” he said. “If they knew how good the catfishing was, they would probably get in one of those boats along the bank and come out here with their rods.”

Willard sets his reel drags lightly and also sets the warning clickers when he’s waiting for a bite. About 30 minutes after he had settled down into a quiet conversation about his job and happy family life, a clicker sounded off and he stood from his seat.

“A circle hook will set itself,” he said. “All you have to do is pick up the rod and turn up the drag while he’s running off with the bait.”

Sure enough, increasing the drag caused the rod to bend into a semi-circle. He tucked the butt underneath his armpit for leverage and thumbed the spool for increasing or decreasing the drag.

“He runs like a blue,” he said. “A flathead runs faster and puts up a better fight.”

Within 5 minutes, the fish was circling the boat. But it still made several dives, digging for the bottom.

“Once you get him off the bottom, you usually aren’t going to lose him,” Willard said. “A big one might break a swivel or pull the hook, but most of the time, if you are patient and keep him out of the anchor rope, you land the fish.”

As he tried to net the fish, water showered him and drenched the inside of the boat. The fish was near the top, but with a flip of its tail sounded again.

But Willard worked the fish back to the net and scooped it aboard. He estimated the blue catfish to weigh around 20 pounds.

“That’s a nice representative Blewett Falls blue,” he said. “We’ll keep fishing for something larger.”

But while other smaller catfish bit, no other big blues came over the gunwale. Willard landed a big channel catfish before he called it a night.

He had drained the live well of live shad and bluegills by reeling in his lines to check them and re-bait them every 15 minutes or so.

“Catfishing can be relaxing,” he said. “But I go at it hard. I want to keep fresh bait on the hook to make sure there’s lots of scent in the water.”

After taking worn-out shad and bluegills from his hooks, he cut them into pieces to use for bait. He also baited hooks with chunks of frozen shad. A piece of cut bait is what drew the strike from the big channel catfish.

It took only a few minutes to land the big channel catfish and it probably weighed more than the North Carolina citation weight of 10 pounds. But it drew no more than a “nice-eating-size” designation from Willard.

“I’ve caught catfish that would eat that one,” he said. “Fish a night or two a week over the summer, and you’ll hook one of the big ones.

“It’ll make you believer. Blewett Falls Lake has some mighty big blues.”