Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

Holly Chow, Winnipeg, a full-time guide for Cats

on the Red at Lockport, Manitoba, nets a catfish for a client. (Submitted photo)

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

LOCKPORT, Manitoba — When Holly Chow steps into her guide boat, she has to catch fish.

After all, anyone with the nickname, “Mama Cat” has to live up to her reputation.

And she does. A lifetime of experience in waters throughout the country sees to that.

But she didn’t really begin to fish for catfish until last spring. That’s when she began guiding full time for Stu McKay’s “Cats on the Red” resort.

“A typical day would be eight guys standing at the dock and they’d see two boats there and they’d see the girl and they’d go, ‘Oh, god, somebody’s got to fish with the girl,’” she said. “Then we’d come in with 24 fish and they’d go, “We were with ‘Mama Cat!’”

The Red River below the Lockport dam is recognized worldwide as a premier big catfish river in the summertime.

“The average size channel cat is about 20 pounds,” Holly said. “I would be ashamed if I took you out and we didn’t get three over 36 inches weighing between 24 and 26 pounds.”… Continue reading

They’re big, they’re ugly and they lurk on the bottom of just about every body of water in the upper Midwest.

Although many of the larger ones may look like it, they’re not the creature from the black lagoon, it’s the catfish, one of the most popular yet under utilized sport fish species in the Midwest.

Catfish are very highly regarded for their food and sports value with thousands of them being raised commercially throughout the U.S.

They can be found in about any body of water, while some species prefer bodies of water that have clean bottoms of sand and gravel.

Other areas that they haunt include logjams, beneath tree roots protruding into the water, beaver runs and they can also be found in rocky turbid areas as long as a food source is in that area.

Found throughout the U.S. with the biggest populations being located in the central part of the U.S.

Several species of catfish can be found in all types of water, including rivers, creeks, ponds and in our larger lakes and reservoirs.… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

All it took was one fish to win last Saturday’s sixth annual “First Class Cat Attack!” on the Missouri and Big Sioux rivers here.

That fish weighed 56.60 pounds.

Dean and Bruce Stroman, Sioux City, caught the big blue cat only a couple hours into the tourney.

They also ended the five-year Carter family dynasty of first place wins in this event.

It was the only fish they caught all day, but it was plenty big enough to beat the second place team of Keith Copenhaver, Sioux City, and Chris Sharp, Merrill, Iowa, who weighed in a limit stringer of 10 fish for 40.90 pounds.

The big blue turned out to be pretty valuable for the Stromans. They netted $1,530 for the first place win, $406 ($100 from First Class Credit Union and $306 from the Big Fish pot) for the Big Fish award and the $1,000 Carter Bounty donated by First Class Credit Union for a total of $2,936.

The second place team cashed a check for $1,071. They had four channel catfish and six flathead catfish. Their biggest fish was a 14.7-pound flathead and won third place for big fish. That paid $50.… Continue reading