New Gear, Big Fish!

[BoyoBoyle]

Ok, so today I went up to Gander Mountain with my buddy in search of a new reel. I was looking around the price range of about 40-50$. This is my first decent reel I'm buying. For a while I used the reel that came with a my combo, and when that one broke my friend gave me an old reel of his, but it was still of bad quality, so after about 4 years im finally gonna buy a nice reel. I looked around and ended up settling for the Gander Mountain Pro Select 35 series for 40$. Nice reel, seemed really smooth and strong, I think it should give me a good couple years of reliable use, I really like it. I also bought some 10" Black and Blue fleck PowerWorms.

My friend bought a white top water weedless mouse.

We got back and decided to try out some of our new equipment.

We went to the pond across my friends house where we can usually catch a few average sized bass. First off, I loved my new reel, my old one skipped so much and was always really loose... it was pretty much shot. But I managed to catch about 7-8 bass in an hour and a half. I was very pleased.

My friend was using his new Mouse, using it top-water over a bunch of vegetation.... he was having some trouble. On his first cast he got a huge hit... but he couldn't set the hook. After that, he pulled out one bass. He was starting to get a bit frusturated, and my friend is a long time fisher, hes the best among my group of friends and has the most knowledge and experience.

I was fishing one side of the pond, when I started hearing a bunch of commotion. I turn to look and see my friend with his rod bent and a massive tail flopping in the air with water flying everywhere! This thing had to be HUGE! He says "Its a big one!!!" and I start jogging to where he is to watch the fight... Once I start jogging he yells "CATFISH!" I get over there and watch him fight this big cat. He eventually gets the cat up on the shore, and as hes dragging him in, his rod snaps in half! He then reaches down and grabs his line (14 lb. fireline) and the cat, then his line breaks! The cat starts flopping towards the pond, when I yell "grab him!" and my buddy leaps on the fish and pulls it into shore. We took a few pics and released the big fish. He was proud, it was a great day fishing.



Yes he caught it with a topwater mouse, strange huh? Well, this is the only catfish in this pond.... how? my friend put it in there 3 years ago, and it's been growing since, and it's the first time it's been caught.