Heading to Mattawoman tomorrow 5/28

[Shady]

I'm taking my brother out for his first kayak fishing trip of the year. Hoping we can find some nice cats to pull on the line and hopefully some bass. I don't even want to mention the other fish we'd like to catch but you all know what it is...

Anybody want to join us?

[chex]

I wish... gotta work though. good luck!

[Shady]

We didn't find any snakehead but caught plenty small to medium large catfish. My brother had a huge bass on that was easily 5 pounds if not bigger. It jumped out of the water and took a hard dive and broke the line, 15 lb fireline!

I had a decent bass at about 3 lbs hooked on a chatterbait but it jumped off...

We mostly just sat by the old barge catching cat after cat, sometimes two at a time! The big bass was on a top and bottom rig baited with nightcrawlers. One wierd thing of note, I saw a rather large goldfish or koi swimming in the spadderdock

[chex]

Nice. Love those cats. Did you get them on nightcrawlers too?

Aw man, too bad about that big bass!

[Shady]

We got a lot of them on nightcrawlers but I caught all of my blue cats on cut creek chub or dead minnows that I had frozen.

[surfdog]

sounds like you guys had a real good day. too bad no "other fish"

[kevinfry]

I think live minnow, mummichugs anyway, hooked hrough the body are great for blue cats ...except when using circle hooks. AARRRGGGHHH---CIRCLE HOOKS! Am I the only guy who can't make those things work??

[Shady]

Yea, live minnows are definately better, but I was just using some bait i had in the freezer along with walmart nightcrawlers. Cut Creek chub was a pretty good bait today for the blues. We used short J hooks and they worked pretty well.

[ictalurus]

Sounds like a good day. Sorry to hear about the lost bass. Were there a lot of other people on the water?

[Shady]

Sounds like a good day. Sorry to hear about the lost bass. Were there a lot of other people on the water?

There was a ton of people, but really not much different than any summer saturday.

[nay_sayer]

Ryan- you had a better day than we did. That was me and my son in the kayaks that said hello in passing just below the ramp. We (I) got one LM bass about 19 or 20 inches. Despite seeing a bunch of snakeheads all around me back in the lillies I couldn't get any of them to strike. There were a TON of big carp in the spatterdock and they were going crazy. I don't know if you heard all of the commotion back in the cuts all morning but it was carp flopping and rolling. I don't know if they were mating or what.

[tufnik]

I think it was carp you saw, Ryan, not goldfish/koi. When I was fishing there 2-3 weeks ago, there were a lot of them splashing in and around the water plants. Seemed like everywhere I went, I heard them splashing and saw the plants get bumped in the commotion. Some fellow told me they were going through the spawning ritual. I saw some big ones swim by my yak.