My uncles used to tear the catfish up on jugs & trot lines, they mainly caught big yellows. Doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of blues in Choke. Several years ago, I caught a 13lb yellow cat while bass fishing, talk about thinking I had the state record on! Oh the disappointment when I finally got it to the boat. Seems like it’s predominantly yellows & channels, not saying there are no blues, just doesn’t seem like there’s a lot.

Now in case you have forgotten or don’t know it, the lakes full of gar (needlenose & alligator). They will have any cut or live bait cleaned off your lines in short order. We always had to bait the lines right at dusk, might not matter much if rod & reel fishing.

I've caught more blues than channels in choke. But no, there are not a lot of big blues caught in choke.

I'm kind of surprised to hear that, I was under the impression that Choke Canyon had a reputation as a trophy catfish lake, which was why I was interested in checking it out.

The lake record Blue is in the 50lbs, and the flathead is 31. I had the flathead record for a while at 28 until the current record was caught. This is rod&reel records. The all tackle record blue is 70lbs (trotline).

On Friday the wind kicked our butts and we stayed close to Calliham, we tried a couple drifts and picked up 1 small blue. Then we went into a cove and started jigging slabs for whites, we found them and ended up with 18 whites. Day 2 the lake was flat, we spent a lot of time just exploring areas that we hadn't been to in years. Then we went down towards the dam, did some power drifting and picked up 5 eater blues and a drum. On the way in we did some more jigging and I got a 4lbs LMB. Overall it was a good weekend.

I caught this one at the south end on a plastic worm weekend before last while bass fishing. I don’t fish for cats at all. I thought I had a monster bass for a while. Is this a blue or a channel? It was almost 13lbs and I assumed it was a blue.

Looking at that angle with the rays on the anal fin pretty much clear view it's a channel cat.
It looks to be a male with the big head and the anal fin rays look to be around 21-23 spines with a curved edge on the anal fin, and a blue has a more straight edged fin with around 30+ rays or spines on the fin.
The color can vary with the water clarity and a channel usually has spots along the body on the younger cats, but they aren't always present with a larger fish.
That is a big channel at 13#.

I just looked at the TP&W site- if it really is a channel cat it was a lake record ( biggest official is 8.2lbs). There was no one around and I figured is was just a decent blue and turned it loose. Wish there had been someone around to get a better pic.

Can't see the tail in the pic. Based on what I can see that is a big channel.