Where'd the Shad Go?

Came down to fish again with James (Muzkrat).  We got on the river at dark, and began to set the gill net and throw the cast net in the usual spots.  We came up empty so we moved to a different part of the river and tried for bait again.  Nothing. 

Hours began to creep by, and we were still without a single shad so we had nothing to fish with.  At about noon, six hours after we got on the water, we got a call from Dicky (Fokromix) who was also having bait troubles earlier but finally lucked into some shad.  We met up with him and his crew and he gave us a couple shad.  James and I decided to go ahead and fish and quit looking for bait since we had already lost so much time.

We  managed three fish on the day, a 23# being the largest.

23#:



Neat story on this fish.  We had it out of the water for less than a minute, but when we released the fish, it turned on its side and had trouble going back under.  We pulled the fish out of 10' of water, so burping was not an issue as far as we could tell.    We watched the fish drift away, just laying on its side on top of the water.  A few minutes later, we noticed a seagull circling the fish, and after a couple passes it landed right next to the fish.  It looked around a bit then began pecking the hell out of the catfish's belly.  Like magic, the catfish suddenly roared back to life, splashed its tail, and disappeared below to avoid being disemboweled.

Did I mention it was brutally cold that day?  You can make out an ice line on the water in the picture below: