Caught my first catfish on the fly today on the Upper Guadalupe River. I caught it on an orange crawfish pattern on the bottom. It might not be a big catfish, but I thought I hooked the record Guadalupe-Bass. I was using the orange crayfish, because I had caught a nice Guadalupe that vomited up an orange crawfish, so I matched the hatch and that seemed to do the trick!

I had that same thing happen fishing the riverbassin.com tourney last weekend. It wasnt my first catfish on the fly but for a while I thought I had one hell of a bass on the end of the line until. . . well it was just a fat ol' channel cat(April FOTM). Thought I had the thing won on the first fish, lol. Great intuition on mathing the hatch, and cool catch.

Channel catfish need more love as gamefish, and from you guys' testimonies, they're kinda getting it.

nice catch, I bet the cats are pretty solid competitors for a fly rod

Yeah they're a tussle on the fly. But what I love about Channel cats is the one's that aren't huge, typically aren't that ugly. That's a main reason why I don't target catfish... especially flatheads.

The smaller cats seem to love my flies. I have yet to catch a crappie on the fly though. Catfish are a lot of fun to pull in though. Congrats!

That one you caught there looks extremely healthy. Not an ugly thing about it.

Crappies love chart. clousers. If you use those a lot and fish some structure/cover, you're bound to catch one sooner or later.

I guess I don't know how to fish a Clouser real good. I can't ever remember catching a fish on one. I must be retrieving it wrong.

I'm with you Kelly. I fish them, but never seem to get a bite.

Foreal? I catch about 85% of my fish with Clousers. I start out the day with something else, but if that's not working, it's my go-to. I'm actually really surprised. What fly(s) are you guy's go-to's?

Clousers are great flies -- very versatile. I've caught a bunch of species on them, including two four pound bass in a neighborhood lake near my house.

I especially like tying and fishing "Foxee Clousers" tied with Arctic Fox or Red Fox. Here's a link to a great pattern:

http://www.flyfishohio.com/Foxee_Red_Clouser.htm

(The bass I mentioned were caught on a small chartreuse and white Foxee Clouser with black dumbbell eyes.)

I have a memory of fishing on Cedar Creek with Christian. We were working the riprap near dusk hoping to pick up any bass that might be feeding there. We ran into a school of pan sized channel cats and for some little bit we were picking them up, one after another, on Clousers. That was fun!

I have a fly I came up with and tie with orange maribu tail, chenelle, yarn or palmered maribu body, synthetic "hair" wing and chain eyes that works well on bass and bream (I tied it for carp, but haven't gotten one of them to take yet). I probably catch most of my big fish on poppers, wolly buggers and gotchas. I know the gotcha is a salt water shrimp imatation, but it must look like something in the freshwater because big crappies, bluegill and small mouth bass love them. Maybe I just have problems fishing a weighted fly.

I can't hardly catch a fish on any other fly but a clouser