First "trophy" hunt

Today is only the 3rd time I've ever intentionally tried to catch catfish. We don't eat them but after my trip a week or so ago and knowing my son likes it, I've decided we are going to become trophy catfish hunters. We tried them again this afternoon. Armed with skipjack, 9/0 hooks and 50lb line. My son hung this one less than 30 minutes after we got on the water. As you can tell by his smile, he was tickled to catch it. The fish weighed 26.96 pounds. Close enough I'm just calling it an even 27.

https://i.postimg.cc/9FPn8ynT/5-C46-...A1-CD7-EC0.jpg

Man that's a big ole blue.

A great catch for sure! Congrats to him!

I don't trophy fish. Nothing wrong with it but for fishing and hunting I've always done them for the food value. If I caught a 40# catfish of any kind, would it be worth eating? Retired and think often about going to the south east to fish for crappie just because we don't have any big one's around here. Two thing's in the way. Someone I'd trust to watch over my dog's and how in the world would I get a crappie back 2500 miles without it spoiling? How stupid! Take the dog's with me and my own boat but then how do I get the fish home? Again, how stupid. Just eat them there. Starting to sound like a rich guy! :-)

I’m definitely not a trophy hunter. I’ve killed a lot of deer but I’ve never eaten any antlers. I love venison though. I have no desire to eat a catfish that weighs more than a pound. If we had other stripe, I’d chase them instead of large catfish. I wouldn’t eat them either. Since I don’t eat them I have no desire to catch small ones, so we upsized the bait and the tackle to target larger fish. My son had a blast, so mission accomplished. Regarding transporting fish from the SE to Oregon, if you froze them first and put dry ice with them in a cooler it wouldn’t be hard to get them home.