Friday, May 29, 2009
Fat cat
Rockbridge County anglers Tim Wilson and Danny Ayers team up to catch the first 100-pound freshwater fish officially recorded in Virginia.
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Danny Ayers admits he's not much of a fisherman.
He'd rather spend his time in the woods chasing spring gobblers.
But the idea of catching a big catfish did sound intriguing.
So last week, the resident of Glasgow headed down to the tidal James River with his turkey hunting buddy and distant cousin, Tim Wilson of Natural Bridge Station.
"I'd never caught a catfish over 20 pounds," said Ayers, who admits he bought his fishing license just a couple of days before the trip. "He said, 'I guarantee you one over 30.'"
Fishing promises are risky business, but Wilson got this one right.
In a huge way.
A few hours after hitting the water, the two were boating a monstrous blue catfish.
After a hectic effort to find a set of certified scales that could handle the trophy, the fish was officially weighed at 102 pounds.
Not only is the fish a pending state record for its species, its the first registered freshwater fish in Virginia to ever break the triple digit weight barrier.
"I fish 12 months a year," Wilson said. "This is a highlight and a dream come true."
If there is a down side to the story for the men, it's that only one name can be attached to the record.
"It was a 50-50 deal all the way," Wilson said. "It's a shame it can't be registered to both of us."
Unlike world records maintained by the International Game Fish Association, state records tracked by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries don't specifically disqualify a fish if an angler receives assistance while making the catch.
According to fisheries biologist Ron Southwick, a member of the DGIF committee that reviews state record applications, there's no specific rule prohibiting a catch from being assigned to more than one angler. But there's no allowance for it, either.
Ayers and Wilson hoped to apply for the record as a team. But they agreed that, should only one name be allowed, it would be Wilson's, the team's leader.
Wilson, a 51-year-old retiree who worked in a variety of business, including logging, construction and car sales, started fishing the lower James River for catfish about 20 years ago.
After breaking away from catfish to spend some time concentrating on tournament bass fishing, Wilson recently got back into the action on the James, which has evolved into a nationally known trophy catfish spot.
"Last year we had a 65-pounder, a couple of 50s and many in the 40s," Wilson said.
Having left Rockbridge County before dawn on May 20, the two were on the river in Wilson's 22-foot-long Carolina Skiff Sea Chaser and fishing by shortly after 8 a.m.
Action was slow for a couple of hours, producing only one 4-pound catfish, hardly what Wilson had in mind.
Wilson focuses on big fish, and uses big baits intended for monster cats.
He uses medium heavy Big Cat rods, Abu Garcia 7000 level-wind reels spooled with 30-pound test line, and 50- to 80-pound test leaders. On the business end, he uses a fishfinder rig with 9/0 Gamakatsu circle hook impaled with a live eel or big hunk of cut shad.
"You can go down there and catch 100 catfish a day," he said. "You know, 2-, 3- and 4-pounders.
"If I get four, five or six bites, I feel like I had a good day."
Soon after the men moved to a new spot, a fish started fooling with one of the men's baits, a piece of cut shad.
Wilson picked up the rod and fed line to the fish, which was moving off with the bait.
"I probably let him go 50 yards," Wilson said.
Confident the fish had the bait, Wilson engaged the gears on his reel and applied pressure.
The fish was hooked.
Now it was Ayers' turn.
"He handed the pole to me and said, 'Just don't jerk,'" said Ayers, a 58-year-old retired phone company technician.
This is where a normal trophy fish story describes the epic battle between man and beast.
Not in this case.
"It was like pulling in a log," Ayers admitted. "It was really easy."
With the fish boatside, Wilson reached for his net. And what a net it is.
"He just bought it," Ayers said. "He paid $120 for it, I think.
"He kept talking about it."
Wilson is proud of the tool.
"I got a good net," he agreed. "It's probably as big as your truck hood."
Scooping the fish into the gaping net was easy. Getting it into the boat wasn't.
"We both have bad backs," Wilson said. "Once we got him into the net, it was all both of us could do to lift him in the boat."
Ayers wasn't sure what to think about the catfish, a pre-spawn female whose belly was so distended it appeared to have been feeding on basketballs. But Wilson knew the fish was special.
Wilson had a deer scale in the boat, but lifting the fish to weigh it -- Ayers stood on a cooler -- proved difficult. So, they decided to get the fish to a better scale.
But the men wanted to keep the fish alive so it could be released.
"I've got a big fish box in the boat and I've put some nice stripers in there," Wilson said. "But, shoot, he wasn't going in there."
So the men covered the fish with soaked towels and blasted to the Dutch Gap public boat ramp, where they had launched.
Ayers kept the fish in the net in the water while Wilson loaded the boat on his trailer. Then they sped to Castaway Sporting Goods in nearby Chester.
The store didn't have a scale that could weigh a fish over 100 pounds, so the men rushed back to the river and put the netted fish back in the water.
Things got easier when Castaway owner Wayne Andrews showed up with a 100-gallon fiberglass tank he'd been able to locate.
The fish was transferred again after the arrival of DGIF biologist Bob Greenlee, who had a 150-gallon tank in the workboat he was hauling.
The convoy headed up to Glen Allen to Greentop Sporting Goods, which had a certified scale.
By then, word of the monster fish had gotten out and a good crowd was on hand.
One question kept coming up.
"Everybody kept asking, 'Who caught it? Who caught it?'" Wilson said. "I kept saying, 'Both of us did.'"
At Greentop, the scale hit an official mark of 102 pounds, easily topping the standing mark of 95 pounds, 11 ounces for a fish caught by Archie Gold in the lower James in 2006.
Southwick said he doesn't foresee any problems with the record application, which could be approved within a matter of days.
Greenlee, who hauled the fish back to the river and released it at an undisclosed location selected by Wilson, said he wasn't surprised by the weight of the fish.
"I'm surprised it hadn't happened up to this point," Greenlee said.
Knowing how the James just keeps producing bigger and bigger blues, Wilson isn't banking on this being a long-standing record. That doesn't bother him.
"It doesn't matter how quick it gets broke, or how many times it gets broke," he said. "What they can't take away is that we caught the first 100-pound catfish in Virginia."
