Fishing for catfish early in the shallows, using a fresh shad.

pretty solid drum.


nice catch.

nice drum man. those things love the shad

nice goo!!

Nice fish!

Very cool fish!

what does the terminology refer to? I've seen blue cats called this too.

Gasper? As far as freshwater drum go, it's short for "Gaspergoo" which is a local name for them in some places, cajun in original I believe. Bret can give you the full history of the term, but I think it comes from an original french term that means something like "Shell-breaker", referring to the fish's habit of cracking open and devouring freshwater mussels.

Thanks everyone.
That gasper took a while to land and it was a challenge from start to finish with adjusting the drag and trying to keep it from going under the boat or wrapping around the prop.
It made several long runs and I was thankful I had plenty of line.

Awesome!

great fish...the next one should go in the live well....if you like eating fish...thats one of the best....great catch thanks for sharing!

Love eating fish and I did take it home.
My wife fried it up for me and my son.
He liked it but even though the flavor was good I thought it was too tough.
I normally release catfish over 10lb and bass over 5lb for the same reason - meat just isn't as good to me.
I've ate many a gasper in the 3-5lb range and liked them.
This gasper was over 10lb and just a bit tough for my taste.

Here's another pic of it:

nice fish...Congrats

yeah, 10 lbs would be a bit out of my freshwater drum eating range too.

Glad to see someone else eating them, they are one of the most overlooked fish in our water. they'll take lures, flies and bait, they fight pretty well, they taste good, they get big, and they're plentiful.

I don't like the bigguns of any species, they do seem to get tough. If you soak in milk overnight the flavor is better, but still not as good as a 3lber Damn fine catch no matter how it tasted.