Thread: Catfish rod?

For eatin cats I just use a medium rod with a spinning reel.

I have two different sets of catfishing rods. One for the eating sized (which I rarely use) and the other set are my striper rods with 10/0 hooks loaded for big catfish. I love feeling the pull of those big catfish...and especially love seeing the takedown. It can get pretty hard getting the rod out of the holder if the fish is big enough. HA!

I will have to say though...it's more about the reel than it is the rod. With 10/0 circle hooks the rod loads up and the pressure sets the hook for you so bigger fish might need a bit stiffer rod. On smaller catfish you set the hook generally so lighter rods detects a lighter bite better. Ive caught striper in the 10-15 lb range with crappie equipment. You just gotta have decent reels with the drag set right.

I'm really only interested in eating size fish, up to around 6#. My rods are all med action 6' to 7' and recomended line weight up to 17#. Biggest fish I ever caught was right at 25#, salmon in the ocean. Got it on my Berkley Lighting Rod. have a couple Berkley Cherrystone rods I really like also. Someone already said it, match the rod to the size fish your hoping for. With cats thats a pretty big gap. I get bullheads up to about 12" and have a fairly light set up for them using a low pro level wind reel. For channels where I'm at it seem's that 6# is a big fish. That is reflected in the equipment I use. But I've heard they get up to 50# maybe more in the Columbia River and the Resivor over near Richland. Still I'll use the equipment I have and hope for eating size fish. On the off chance I might want to try to catch a big fish I go to my sturgeon rod; match the rod to the size fish you want to catch.My sturgeon set up will certainly handle even a 100# fish and my med action rods will handle anything I'm targeting!

FYI The world record blue cat caught at Buggs Island here in Va weighed 143 lbs and was caught on an Ugly Stick with a Shimano reel and 30 lb test line.

I have my ABU 6500 on a 7' berkley Lighting rod, medium action. Biggest fish I've caught on it was a 25# salmon out in the oceaan. I suspect it would also handle a 25# cat. Have two shakespere ugly sticks, 6', med action I put low profile reels on just for bull heads but I suspect they would handle decent size eater cats also. For most fish I like 6' tp 7' med action rods. Spinning would probably work with them to but all my spinning stuff except a couple are UL rods. To slow I think for bigger fish even if I was to try them. If I were targeting fish bigger than 25# to 30# or so, I have a 7' rod I got just for sturgeon with 80# braid on it. If all I had was the sturgeon rod I'm pretty sure I could catch 3# cats with it! :-)

Nothing like an old ABU.