The Weekend Review

Well, if you couldn't tell from the picture, I spent the weekend fishing for catfish down in Middle Tennessee. There were a bunch of guys, a lakehouse, two boats, two canoes, cards, games, and a lot of food. Sounds like a good time, doesn't it? It was, don't worry.

Now about these catfish. Well, the technical term for the type of fishing we did is "juggin'." As the name implies, what one must do is take a jug, tie a line to it, and on that line tie a hook, and on that hook tie something foul-smelling, rotting, and altogether what catfish love to eat. Once this is done, then the jugs go in the water, and you wait.

Well, we went to put 'em out in the water. We were in the second boat, as the first had gone out before (and taken all the good jugs!). When we got on the water, we saw one of their jugs right off, and you could tell there was a catfish on it! Now, this is the fun part of juggin': those bottles move, and when there is catfish on one, it just bobs, and shakes, and your blood starts racing. So we pulled up to the jug, and I reached out (as I was the only one in the boat who hadn't gotten to experience this joy yet). When I pulled the line in, there was a four pound catfish (the one on the far left i believe) fighting me! Oh man, talk about fun!

But you don't care about that. You want to know about the big catfish I'm holding. Why? Well, because it's the big one. So let me tell you about that catfish. We'd put out all our jugs, and we'd been puttering around the lake at midnight (because you fish for catfish at night). We decided to check our jugs real quick before we went and did some real fishing, and so we headed over to where we had put all of ours. As we neared the spot, we began to shine a spotlight over the area searching for any movement that we could see. There was none. And then, we saw one. Tim, who was driving the boat (and is not pictured), said something about how low the jug was sitting in the water, and we all agreed that it was very low. We were pumped. I just can't tell you how it feels to see your jug moving around like that.

But as we got closer, there seemed to be something a little weird about the jug. And Kyle (who is standing beside me) leaned forward and said:

"guys, that's no jug. It's a space station."

Okay, that's not exactly what he said, but he got the point across. It was no jug. It was a catfish just swimming along on the top of the water. We figured later that the reason for this was the catfish had been eating a lot, and had gotten bloated from it. So he was swimming it off, so to speak. So, what do you do when there is a big catfish just swimming along, and you are trying to catch big catfish? Well, you try and catch it.

There we were, perched on the edge of the boat. I was ready with a net. Tim was running the motor. And Kyle was standing behind me, ready at a moment's notice. We were dead quiet, trying to sneak up on the fish. As we got close Kyle said, "Go ahead and put the net in the water." I slid the net into the water so I could scoop up the fish, and as we got up to it, we made our move. I slid the net up under the fish and begin to lift. As soon as the net touched him though, he realized what was happening, and he was a big fish. So I'm standing there with a net in my hands that is just bucking around everywhere, so Tim reaches down and grabs the net on either side and pulls it out and drops it in the boat. And put his foot down on the fish to keep it there. It was huge. Later, we weighed it at 11 and a half pounds. We dropped it in the live well, and we were pretty happy. And for those of you who will doubt, and say you don't believe me; for you I am prepared! I anticipated your doubt and give you proof:



Oh, it was amazing. And then, we radioed the other boat to tell them that we decided quit juggin' because the fish were just swimming right into our boat.