King’s Bluff lock and dam is top destination for blue cats at the state’s biggest river.
Jackie Blanchard made a half-circle into the parking lot at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers boating-and-picnic area at Lock and Dam No. 1 at King’s Bluff in Bladen County.The dam is the first navigational hurdle in the Cape Fear River for humans and fish heading upriver from Wilmington. It’s a massive structure, built in the early 1900s.
The roar of the water cascading across the face of the dam is downright deafening. But the locks seldom operate for commercial traffic anymore. More often, they are used to elevate fish upstream of the obstacle.
Blanchard readied his gear then backed his trailer down the long, steep ramp to the water. Launching his boat, he would soon join other anglers fishing for shad, as his lightweight spinning tackle dangling tiny darts and jigs testified.
Yet curiosity would get the best of anyone checking out his other gear. The heavy ocean tackle resting on the seat alongside his ultra-light shad-spinning outfits seemed out of place, an indication he had bigger gamefish in mind.
Blanchard, a retired New Hanover County teacher, said he has fished for shad at the lock and dam since he was a teenager. However, last year he decided to fish for something new.
“I had heard of the big blue catfish being caught at the lock and dam,” he said. “Blue cats have really taken over the river, and they love to eat shad. So we thought we’d double our fun by fishing for shad and maybe catching a few blue cats at the same time.”
Blanchard and his pal, a fellow retired New Hanover County teacher, tied their boat off to the steel posts lining the west side of the river below the dam, jutting from the water just away from the side of the lock.
Blanchard uses wheelbarrow tires or boat tires as bumpers to protect his boat from the rusty metal as the boat sways in the churning current flow. He cuts holes in the tires to let the water out after fishing so they are lighter and don’t dump a deluge in the bottom of the boat when retrieved.
“When you get old like us, you don’t want to use a heavy cinder block as an anchor anymore,” he said. “It’s too heavy to retrieve and bangs up the boat. So we started tying off to the metal posts by the lock.
“But they keep moving the warning signs farther downstream each year so you might not be able to tie up that close to the dam some day.
“You really want to heed those warning signs and stay away from the dam.”
People have been drowned and boats have been sunk when they ventured too near the dam.
The water creates a whirlpool affect that can draw boats upstream beneath the cascading water and sink them in a flash so boaters must keep a safe distance.
“The other potential hazard is the overhanging trees,” Blanchard said. “I’ve never seen one fall from the dam. But every time you go up there, there is at least one big old tree stuck across the top of the dam. Sooner or later, it’s going to float across.
“If you happened to be anchored downstream of the tree, it would be a mighty dangerous situation. The tree could sink your boat.”
Blanchard and his pals, Gaither Lewis and Alex Sneed, have caught catfish weighing as much as 35 pounds at Lock and Dam No. 1.
They prefer to use the freshest shad they can as catfish bait, preferring to catch a buck American, also known as the white shad, by slicing it into strips. They usually let the larger roe shad go. Roe shad can weigh 8 pounds while buck shad weigh a couple of pounds.
“I might use a shad I’ve caught the day before,” Blanchard said. “The limit is 10 shad, but I’m the only one in my family who eats them. So I keep a couple to fry and use the others for bait or let them go.
“Part of the fun is catching shad for bait at the same time you’re fishing for catfish. But if you have a fresh shad, you’d better bring it along because there’s no guarantee you will catch one on any given day.
“It also lets you start catfishing right from the time you tie up, without catching a fresh shad. But once you have a fresh one, you’d better use it as bait for the best results.”
Blanchard fishes for shad with an ultralight spinning rod and a tiny jig called a dart or a small crappie jig. He puts the shad strip baits on the bottom for catfish using a Carolina rig.
“You drop the baits straight down or they’ll hang up more often,” he said. “The bottom is full of rocks and rubble and will hang up almost anything you use so you don’t want to let it drift or roll.
“We use a 3/0 circle or J-hook that’s the same one we use for catching flounder. You want to use a cheap hook because you’re going to lose a bunch of them.
“Sometimes I use an egg sinker. But most of the time I use a 3-ounce bank sinker. I might rig the bank sinker onto the line with a snap swivel, especially when I pre-rig at the house. But once I get to the river and start hanging and breaking off, I usually just forgo the swivel, passing the line through the bank sinker eye after smoothing the eye with an ice pick to keep the line from fraying.”
The standard outfit Blanchard uses consists of 30- or 40-pound-test monofilament line fished with a Penn No. 9 or Penn No. 209 trolling reel mated to a 6-foot pier fishing or trolling rod.
Terminal tackle is a swivel, plastic bead, sinker, 8-inch leader of 40-pound monofilament and the hook tied at the end.
Sometimes Blanchard modifies the rig.
“I saw Al Lindner, the television personality rig what he called the Lindner Rig,” Blanchard said. “Instead of using a swivel and leader, Lindner just slides the bank sinker on the line, puts on a bead and ties on the hook.
“You let some slack in the line after the sinker hits the bottom and the current takes the bait away from the sinker. It’s easy to tie and works very well.
“I buy the cheap beads in bags you can get at Wal-mart at about a million for a dollar, so the cost of the beads doesn’t matter. The bead keeps the sinker from sliding all the way down and over the hook.”
The trick to landing a big blue catfish is to get him off the bottom as fast as possible.
Blanchard uses all the drag he can muster without breaking the line.
He also follows the philosophy of Robert Ruark, the famous writer from nearby Southport, who wrote the book “Use Enough Gun.”
“Once you get him off the bottom, he’s pretty well whipped,” he said. “After that you just hang on, keep the line tight and be sure to use enough net.
“It needs to be at least 3-feet wide and plenty deep. There are 100-plus pound catfish in the Cape Fear River, and you don’t want a trophy or potential record to get away.”
Blanchard seldom eats the big blues he catches, preferring to eat smaller catfish. He said they taste better and there’s no reason to kill fish so big an entire family can’t finish them over several meals.
“I like to eat blue cats weighing up to 3 or 4 pounds,” he said. “I cut them into fingers just like grouper fingers or nuggets and fry them.
“The little ones taste the best. I’ve eaten them out of the Santee Cooper lakes and they weren’t too good. But the Cape Fear River’s blue catfish taste excellent when you fry them up.”
Blue catfish are unique in their feeding patterns. While channel catfish are scavengers, eating anything from mussels and clams, to fish and shrimp, to hot dogs and Spam and even soap and flathead catfish are notoriously fond of live fish of any species, blue catfish prefer to gorge on schooling fish such as shad.
The shads form dense schools at Lock and Dam No. 1, where they wait to be lifted over the dam by operation of the lock.
During the spring spawning runs of striped bass and shad, the lock is operated on a defined schedule to help the fish migrate upstream. The Lockmaster carefully watches the lock and when it has lots of migrating fish inside, he lifts them to the dam level.
This occurs several times per day during the peak run.
Various fish ladders have been tried by wildlife agencies, with dubious results. But lifting the fish through the lock definitely increases their spawning potential upriver since fry can be seen falling over the locks after the eggs have hatched.
The combination of eggs, fry and schooling shad attracts other species besides blue catfish.
“My Buddy, Gaither Lewis, hooked a tarpon on a shad dart at the lock and dam last year,” Blanchard said. “We’ve seen porpoises up here and flounder have been landed. We’ve also caught some nice stripers fishing with cut shad on the bottom for catfish.
“That’s what’s so neat about fishing below the dam. You never know what you might catch if you target shad and blue cats. I’ve even caught a few small flatheads on cut shad while fishing for blue cats.
“Now a flathead is also a fine-eating catfish, so I’ve taken small flatheads home along with the small blues.”
Eric Jansen of Wilmington had also heard about the lock-and-dam blue cats. He and his pal, Chris Elliot of Burgaw, had made the trip to Lock and Dam No. 1 the same day as Blanchard and Gaither Lewis. They were using a different rig but were also having good luck.
“We’ve caught three blue cats,” Jansen said. “They weighed 8, 11 and 20.5 pounds.”
The pair anchored their john boat in the channel. They were getting their hooks hung occasionally but weren’t losing many rigs.
“Instead of using a Carolina rig, we use tube jigheads,” Jansen said. “They don’t hang up because they’re long and narrow. They just slide right through rocks most of the time.
“Even when they don’t, you can straighten the hook if it gets hung. It’s also faster to tie on a jig head than a Carolina rig.”
“We catch shad with darts and cut them up for bait,” Elliott said. “It’s easy to feel the strike.
“The catfish pick it up off the bottom and keep on going. You set the hook and try to get his head up above the rocks.
“Once he starts up, you have to keep him coming. They can put up a good fight in all this current.”
The tube jighead they use weighs 1 ounce. The long hook shank puts the barb well back in the mouth of a blue catfish for a solid hook-set.
Like Blanchard and Lewis, Jansen and Elliott used a large landing net to boat their blue catfish. They were also fishing from a john boat, but were using a cinder block for an anchor.
Many fishermen use a grapnel. Some use car axles and lumps of metal. But few use fluked anchors because they hang up in the rocky bottom.
“There are lots of anchors, ropes and fishing rigs down there to hang your hooks,” Jansen said. “Fishing a tube jig head prevents hang-ups and keeps from adding to the junk that’s already down there.”
As to eating blue cats, the duo was releasing their larger catfish. They also released the shad they caught but weren’t using for catfish bait. They said they might keep a small catfish to eat.
“We just come here to get away from home and have some fun,” Elliot said. “There’s always something going on here.
“Sometimes it gets crowded on weekends. But you can always find someplace to anchor and fish.”
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