The Amazing Red River of the North (Lots of Photos!)

[hanson]

Every Memorial Weekend finds me at my family's lake cabin on Union Lake in NW MN. A bunch of relatives come over and we usually do some fishing. Well... the fishing on Union, to put it gently, has sucked ever since the water went waaaayyyy up and the lake association installed a pump to lower the water levels. Now, the lake goes up & down so stinking much it reminds me of a reservoir. Since the fishing is so poor, I was looking for an alternative and the Red River was calling my name.

As the weekend was approaching, I was planning to take my dad over to the Red River in Grand Forks, ND for some channel cat fishing on Friday. If the first day went alright, I'd be heading back on Saturday with one of my uncles to show him what catfishing is all about. To be honest, this was one of the most amazing days of fishing I have had in a long time!

Dad & I launched our little Lund in Grand Forks and anchored above a small snag within a few hundred yards of the access. I figured the snag would provide enough cover and disruption to the current to be good for a few cats. There was a nice little seem forming in front of it with a slight eddy coming around the backside. After a few casts to check the bottom, I learned we also had a lot more timber beneath the water as well. Looked good and I tossed our baits out into the water.

Within 20 minutes, I had this fish doubling my rod over in the rod holder. I didn't think the first fish of the day would be 35" weighing 19lbs! Thats an awesome channel cat!

So I was happy we had a fish in the boat but was really wishing it would have grabbed one of my dad's rods. My goal for the weekend was to have my dad catch the biggest channel cat of his life. Well... It only took 20 more minutes for that goal to be accomplished. One of dad's rods starts to double over in the holder and I told him to wrestle it out and crank it in. I wish I had a picture of the look on his face as he struggled to hold onto that rod. All I can say is those fish fight and he was learning what it was all about!

So here's dad with his biggest channel cat ever- 33" weighing 16lbs!

But it doesn't stop there! Over the next 5 hours, we continued to boat 28 more channel cats. It was absolutely insane! There were 20lb channel cats jumping out of the river and splish-splashing all over the surface of the water. I'm not sure what was going on but it was a phenomenal bite that we experienced!

When all was said and done, we boated-

3- 20 pounders

3- 19 pounders

4- 18 pounders

3- 17 pounders

6- 16 pounders

A couple other highlights were this 31" Channel Cat weighing 19 pounds! That fish was an absolute pig! Very, very girthy!

Dad with his biggest ever channel- 33 Incher Weighing 17 pounds, 12 ounces Dad continued to break his "biggest ever" channel cat record until this one was caught! He couldn't hit a 20 pounder though. Next time I hope!

Here's my biggest channel cat for the day. She went 34" & 20 1/2lbs while waving to the camera!

I mean, I could seriously keep posting photos of our fishing trip on Friday to the Red River. All, and I mean all of the fish, were big! Action was very steady with a fish about every 15-20 minutes and only 1 double!

What about the gear? We were using 5/0-6/0 Gamakatsu Octopus Circle Hooks on PowerPro with heavy catfishing rods & Abu-Garcia baitcasters. We needed about 3-4oz of weight to hold bottom and I use the No-Roll style of sliding sinker. We baited up with cut-up chunks of bait shop sucker minnow, cast out to the snag and out into the river channel, and placed the rods in rod holders with spools engaged. I did learn a couple things, I definitely prefer 7000 series Abu's with the power handle over the 6500s for fishing heavy cats like this in current. There were a few times you couldn't crank a 6500, you could always pull on the fish with the 7000s but that wasn't the case with the 6500s. The combination of a lower gear ratio on the 7000 coupled with the power handle really are effective against these Red River channel cats.

Hook up effectiveness with the circle hooks was awesome!! Out of 30 cats caught, 1 swallowed the hook and I have no idea how! The rest were all caught right in the corner of the mouth! Most guys recommend fishing with a heavy mono when using circle hooks because of the stretch factor but that wasn't a problem for us. We didn't have any hooks pull out but that wasn't the case for the entire weekend. We had 2 hooks pull out after the initial hook-up on Saturday but the fish were also biting a little differently/tentatively on Saturday as well.

How did my Uncle do?

So you want to know about the return to the Red River on Saturday with my Uncle? Once again, it was awesome but the action dropped off considerably. But that didn't bother me since my Uncle Dave had never fished cats before. If we got a few in the boat, we would all be smiles.

We motored back to the exact same spot we caught the fish at on Friday. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that all of the fish Friday came from the exact same spot! We anchored up and I prepared Dave to do battle with these cats. I cast out the rods, placed them in the holders, and instructed Dave to grab the rod and wrestle it out of the holder before the rod tip was in the water! Pretty simple!

Within 5 minutes, one of Dave's rods had a fish on and he couldn't get it out of the holder fast enough so we lost the 1st one. Bummer... We soon learned that today was a different day, plus it was 90+ degrees outside with an incredible wind out of the south. Lets just say it was hot!!! The cats weren't surfacing in the river again either which caused me some concern.

But it only took another half hour before I landed the first 15 pounder and then Dave caught his first within minutes after that, his fish happened to be a 33 incher weighing 18 pounds!

Here's my uncle Dave with a 33" Red River Channel Cat weighing 18 pounds! As Dave said over and over on Saturday, "This is some good humor!"

After that fish was caught, we sat for close to an hour with nothing. Getting concerned, I felt we had to relocate but we didn't go that far. In fact, we only went about 20 yards but that allowed us to get our baits closer to the snag we were fishing yesterday. I also switched up the bait after moving to cut Goldeye and I got wacked within 2 minutes of casting out. That would be the 1st fish of the day where the hook pulled loose. I rebaited and cast out again and the same thing happened. We were also getting a lot of light taps and nibbles today which we weren't getting yesterday. Like I said, it was definitely a different day and the fish were acting differently.

The Triple!!!! So I proceed to bait all the rods up with Goldeye and I finally connected! While I'm wrestling the rod out of the holder, my other rod doubles over and I thought the fish got tangled in the other line. I yelled for Dave to grab that rod and then I noticed the lines heading in different directions and we were crossed over as well. Once Dave got his fish on and away from the snag, we wrestled our way around each other and I worked my way up to the net which was waaaayyy in the front of the boat. While I'm grabbing the net, the front right rod gets hit and starts thumping wildly in the rod holder! I yell to Dave we have 3 ON!!! Thinking the third fish was going to pull the rod out of the holder, I got the butt of the rod inside my thigh to put pressure on it while cranking my fish in. Dave netted fish #1 while holding onto his rod and then proceeded to net his fish with an 18lb cat already in the net. It was a sight to see! I then proceeded to pull my fish in and then had to land another 18lb cat by hand since the net wasn't available yet. Unreal!! All 3 of these fish hit within 30 seconds and they all looked like identical 18 pounders. We were so out of breath after this it wasn't even funny!

BTW- For you legal eagles, the Red River border water allows the use of 2 lines per angler!

Here's a nice shot of 2 of the 3 18 pounders!!

All I can say is what a weekend!! We boated 40 channel cats totalling over 600 pounds in 2 days of fishing! The Red River is an unbelievable fishery and we hit it on a couple of good days no doubt! Sometimes you get lucky, eh?

Here's my parting thought...

You know you are in catfish country when this is in the parking lot at the boat ramp!

[DTro]

Nice Job Chris!

How long of a drive is that

[DARK30]

SWEET!

[hanson]

Quote:

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How long of a drive is that

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Ummm... Grand Forks is about 5 hours I suppose, maybe a little less. Its about 3 1/2 to Fargo on I-94 & then straight north on I-29 to Grand Forks another 70 some miles.

We got lucky, talking with Wiskers (Rusty Miller), we experienced about a 4-5 day stretch of fishing that rivaled just about anything on the Red. They turned on about Wednesday and were going nuts through Friday for sure, and then the bite started to die off.

We saw fellow FM guys Rusty Miller out fishing on Friday evening and CatManLee out fishing on Saturday as well. Its cool to run into people "from here" "out there".

[Wiskers]

Dont say the bite dropped off... Hanson... did you catch them all???????? Or did you feed them all too much.. ???? I have clients this weekend, you were suposed to leave me a few...LOL.......

It was a blast fishing over there.. it was a great suprise to see Hanson on the water when I got there. Makes for that much more fun to know you are not alone in the love for fishing.

Any ideas when you might be back up? That 24# cat was my boys biggest cat ever.. that was a pretty darn good day.

[Tyler Holm]

Awesome channels Chris. Those are hogs. Man alive..600lbs of cat is incredible. Great fishing!

Do I smell a new avatar picture coming?

[Dennis Steele]

Way Cool Jr.!

(betcha haven't heard that phrase since the 80's! )

Put the smack down on them grey pigs!

I gotta get up and give that stretch a try.