Just returned from lower Yellowstone adventure. I was supposed to go yesterday (5-21-2016) early in the morning.
But sometimes plans fall through, and sometimes because of it, a better plan comes along...
That said, a friend stopped by yesterday evening hopped up to go catch cats. Being disappointed from earlier, I offered to fill his gas tank and go. (Thankfully the Mrs was ok With that)
We made it to Captain Clark right before 9pm. Surprisingly, there was actually some campers there for a change. After inquiring about the fishing and trading beers, my friend and I headed up stream to the creek...upstream of the creek...across the creek....over the mountains and thru the woods to catfishing hole we'll go (good grief)...until we came to the main creek channel and walked it to it's mouth. Now I've seen the Yellowstone much higher in past seasons, but it's flat out moving this year. It's kind of intimidating when you see the force behind the current and water flows....anyway, since we were late heading out, I brought some frozen sucker with, just in case we needed it. Usually I fish for fresh bait first, but no need this time. The frozen sucker worked like a champ. We layed out 4 rods, on the last bend of the creek before the mouth. One up top, two through the middle, and one at the tail end flat. Within 15 minutes, we switched to one rod apiece. The action was fast and continuous from 9:30 until 1 am. 26 channel cats ranging from 2lbs up to the biggest, caught by my friend, an 11.4 lbs channel!!! I also managed a bonus ling for the second year in a row...It was crazy. Generally most night for me out there is like a total of 8-10 cats. So 26 was something special, at least for me. I personally caught 16.
We got back to the truck about 1:45 am. We both kept 3 cats and despite really wanting the ling, I released it since it was close to 27". I figure the Stone could use a few more mature ling like that to keep the numbers up.
All in all, great outing, especially when I was set on not being able to do anything this weekend.
