Fisherman needs 47 minutes to beat the beast on 6-pound test
Mason Porter of Houlka is a devout crappie fisherman. He’s a member of the Magnolia Crappie Club and Crappie.com, and fishes events on both tournament circuits.
Maybe he should consider catfish tournaments, too.
While fishing on his home waters of nearby Davis Lake Thursday (Feb. 7), Porter caught a 30-pound channel catfish. He did it on an 11-foot jig pole and — this is the amazing part of the story — 6-pound test line.
“It was crazy,” Porter said, calling just after putting the big fish in the boat. “It took me 47 minutes start to finish to get him in the boat, and it was wild the whole time.”
Porter was trolling in deep open water, guiding his boat by its auto-pilot trolling motor system. The crappie fishing was slow, but it was good enough to keep going into the afternoon hours. At about 1:30, the day took a big change.
“We were trolling four poles off the front and four off the back,” he said. “We use B&M Buck’s Super Jig Poles and 6-pound Crappie Maxx line. We were trolling with white and chartreuse eighth-ounce Charlie Brewer Slider Jigs.
“All of a sudden one of the poles bent and I grabbed it and immediately felt it was a big fish. It didn’t take long to know it wasn’t a crappie, and my first thought was that it was another one of those monster bass Davis Lake is known for. You know, like that 17-pounder (State’s second-largest bass caught at Davis Lake) that was caught back in January.”
Porter also knew immediately that this was not going to be easy and it wasn’t going to happen quickly. This was going to take a while.
“I use a spinning reel and I had it set pretty loose on the drag,” he said. “I do that anyway so that I can hand feed line if I need to on big crappie. My partner ran to the back of the boat and reeled in the other lines to get them out of the way, and then went back to run the trolling motor. We had to follow the fish.”
The fight was a fishing version of the tortoise and hare story, with Porter being the tortoise. He was patient to let the fish run itself out of energy.
“Just took a long time,” Porter said. “He was strong and he was steady pulling, but after about 30 minutes he started slowing down and by 45 minutes he was worn out and I was able to start easing him up to the boat.”
Which just presented another problem.
“The fish was too big for my crappie net,” Porter said. “It took us a while, you know, trying not to break the line, but we were finally able to get its head half in the net and then pin it to the side of the boat. Then we just grabbed it and sort of slid it and rolled it up into the boat.”
Which just presented another problem.
“It wouldn’t fit in the livewell either,” Porter said, “and he was darn sure going home with me. He is going to be dinner tonight and several other nights, too. I bet I can get 15 pounds of fillets off this thing.”
As tired as Porter and his partner were, there was plenty of energy left for celebrating.
“Once it was over, yeah, we got a little crazy and were hollering and trading high fives,” he said. “We were pleased.”
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