Here kitty kitty!

Today I took my 10 year old son on a guided fishing trip on the San Gabriel river. I was the guide of course. This meant I brought no tackle along for myself. My son brought along his spinning combo, worm hooks, bobbers and, of course, some big fat nightcrawlers.

We paddled to a pool where I was sure we could catch some bass as that is what he wanted to catch. The first fish to strike was indeed a bass but came off. We then went to the end of point of a gravel bar that was adjacent to deep water and tried our luck there. He caught a catfish! A good one to. He then caught another one. And then another. On the third one, I got jabbed by the spine in the pectoral fin as I was taking out the hook and the kitty twisted about. It wasn't a bad jab but enough to hurt and draw blood. This was a good time to teach my son about being careful of those catfish spines and to always carry a small first aid kit which I had in my bag. A little alcohol swab and a bandage and I was fine.

Now, at this point, I was sort of stunned as I have never caught a catfish from this pool. I have caught some nice cats upstream from here. He continued trying to catch a bass (or a carp which he saw splashing about) but kept catching catfish or got hits but no hookups with whatever it was. In less than 2 hours he caught 7 catfish with the largest going over 4 pounds. The largest one gave him a good fight and we took a photo of it and released it. Actually, in the photo it looks as if he is holding the catfish up but just out of camera range above his hand I am holding the line since the catfish was a little heavy for him to hold up that high.

We had a good time on the river and while he didn't land any bass, he did enjoy catching those catfish. We also saw several herons and a large hawk fly over the pool. I am thinking I need to get him his own kayak because the both of just barely fit in my kayak. He knows how to paddle but I may need to tether his kayak to mine when paddling upriver as it hard work sometimes. We'll be back for those bass some other day.