Any life-long fly fisherman has stories. Some of these stories may at times be over-exaggerated, but some might be so unique that no explanation can do it justice. Although any fish is a “good” fish, there might only be a handful of times during a year when a “holy #$%^” fish is caught that makes you wonder if something like that will ever happen again. I’m talking a less than 1% chance of even happening once to begin with.

To say the least, I have a story that might never be replicated ever again.

Every summer for the past three years, I have made it a point to fly fish in the remote backwater swamps of South Carolina. Although from the road this water can look dark, mystifying, and even intimidating, I have found it unbelievable as to what often is swimming in theses areas. These areas took some time to learn, but through some trial and error, I have started to see some successful results. I typically target bowfin, bass, and gar in these areas, but as this story will tell, consistently am amazed with what catches me off guard (and I’m not talking about just the gators).

For this trip, I decided to ditch the stand up micro-skiff and just fish from shore. The water was extremely high (and even strongly flowing) into one of the rivers that it connects to, and thought that some fish might be tight to the bank looking for structure. With my 8-weight and bowfin fly in hand, I started to through parallel casts to structure. After about two casts, I put a throw right behind a giant tree stump and some lily pads. One strip in, and my rod nearly gets jerked out of my hand. Fish on.

The beast I had hooked immediately had my rod hauled over, and for the life of it did not want to budge from the bottom. Even thought I had foul hooked a “small” gator as it was not moving no matter what I did. After about one-minute, the creature realized that it had been hooked and took off like a bonefish into the middle of the lake. At this point, I knew I had an actual fish on and it confirmed my beliefs with a giant tail slap on the surface. After the first major run, the fish got me wrapped around a submerged stump, causing me to get into the water to try and change the rod angle to free it up. Fortunately for me, this worked and the fish decided to do a close-range fight after this.

After about a 10-minute fight (and even needing to stand on top of a submerged picnic table to pass my rod between trees to fight the fish), I pulled up the second largest catfish I had ever seen (only to be topped by my 150+ pound Wels catfish on the fly I caught in Italy). With my fly buried in the side of its mouth, I grabbed the fish with both hands, realized it was my first blue catfish, and proceeded to carefully take pictures and release this beast back to its home.

Goes to show that no matter what you think you might run into, the fishy world has a way of surprising us. Tight lines and thanks for reading!

Joe