Catfishing last night Virginia

Made it out.Ended up catching 10 catfish.8 blues and 2 channel catfish.Biggest fish being around 15 pounds.Awesome time fishing right on my birthday with my brother in-law Kevin and his friend Adam.We had Adams nice 19.5 foot boat.

Great job!! That's some good eating ...

Thanks.Now all filleted and in freezer bags in the freezer.

Looks like a good time and Happy Birthday.

Didn't even save out a mess for fresh eating?

Will eat fillets and venison cheeseburgers during my week away from home working each week in Baxter State Park.

Looks like a lot of fun and some good eating.

Nice eaters right there. Around here we can't seem to keep the 100 pounders off our small baits and have to keep throwing them back in until we run out of bait. I think that the 100 pounders are eating all of our eater-sized cats. At night, in some stretches, you can walk across their backs to get across the river.
(Sorry. I couldn't help but fall into "fish story" mode. Some of the above is partially true however.)

Lol

Tiring all niters

looks like a great day

Congratulations

Good deal Bruce

Suppose to try and catch a flathead tonight.

If you do, fry up that belly meat for supper. Best catfish you'll ever eat. Imo.

you fishin the James?

Yep.No luck.Fish just were not biting.Did catch another blue that bit just like a flathead.Thought it was a flathead untill I see the head was wrong and the forked tail.

Many years ago, I fished the James around Hopewell for bluecats, because we didn't have them here.
Rappahannock too, esp.since it's closer to me.
Now, they are EVERYWHERE!

Did not make it to Hopewell.Maybe next year.

How would you rank order the 3 catfish species in terms of eating, say best to worst?

Haven't eaten many flatheads, but ones I had were good.
Blues way better than channels.
Even white cats, our native tidal water cats, are better than channels, but they are all head, little meat.

Again, all caught in tidal/ brackish water here, do others' results may be different.

Besides, enough batter, hot sauce and beer, and most everything ain't bad!

Love eating blues.Never had flathead.Channel catfish are great eating as well.

Flathead all the way up to as big as they get is hard to beat.
Blue cats under 15# is a close second to what they call fiddlers (2 pounds or slightly smaller channel cats).
Channel cats much over 5 pounds start to get a muddy taste. Removing all red meat and belly meat will make big ones better to eat.

I do remove all red meat.

Flathead are my favorite