Granbury Blues 1-18-2020

Had another great day cat fishing on Lake Granbury. Took my dad and youngest son out yesterday. The day started really slow with a hybrid and a small cat in the boat. Fished from 9am until 2:00pm with little activity. Finally tried a third spot which was much deeper and showing feeding fish on sonar, and wham!! 76#’s of blues in about 2 and a half hours!! All on cut shad, rod and reels fished on bottom. 55-60 feet of water. Anchored using Terrova Spot-Lock. Except the I don’t care to run the lake after dark, I think we could have kept catching them if we’d have stayed longer.

One question for you guys. What do you do to better insure survival of fish pulled from the deeper water? My freezer is loaded with fish, and I’d prefer to release the bigger ones if they’ll survive. I know the debate about toxins in the bigger fish, but if they’re gonna die from fishing too deep, Then I’m gonna at least keep the meat. Can you fizz catfish like I see done with bass?

Anyway, pics of the day below:

People (not just you) keep saying there are Hybrids in Granbury but I looked at stocking reports and can’t find any recently. They’re sterile so how can there be any in there at this time? Just wondering. All I ever catch are stripers and sand bass

I might be off on my identification. However many of the stripes are broken. I’ve been struggling to be able to tell the difference.

Stripers/hybrids weren’t yesterday’s target, but I feel like one spot we fished had bass schooled and suspended that I thought were cats. No luck with catfish but pulled up the one striped fish.

See photo and see if you think it’s a striper or hybrid. I’d like to know myself.

Thanks,
Mike

Awesome man! congrats on the blues! I used to catch a lot of big stripers on Granbury. Dang golden algae sure screwed up a great lake. Good to see it making a comeback!

Great day guys. You don't fizz them like a bass,you burp them. Some people use a piece of pvc, rubber hose, rod butt, etc. I prefer to just use my fingers because you don't injure the fish. What you do is put your fingers in the back of the catfishes throat and push down a little to open it's throat up and the air will escape it's belly. Sometimes you need to push on the belly a little bit while using your fingers. Once the air escapes (usually sounds like a burp) the fish should swim off just fine.

Make sure you are using circle hooks so you don't deep hook the fish.

There are YouTube videos on burpping catfish.

Thanks. I’ll check out the videos on burping them. We are using a combination of circle and khale hooks.

Nice!

Nicely done. Congrats

Thanks!

I’m not sure either which is part of the reason I asked. I look at the stocking history and some are highly inaccurate. Some say smallmouth were stocked, others say “palmetto bass” were stocked. I give up any more. I’m not a big cat fisherman but we hook them every so often and Granbury seems to have a healthy population. We catch small channel cats by the dozens off of our dock up in the canals and my daughter in law has some pet ones that come up nightly when she feeds them. She can even pet some of them

That sure looks like a hybrid to me according to this:

https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/fishing/freshwater-fishing/bass-identification

So I agree with you. Enjoy the cat fishing.

Nice fish. Good job.

Well done!

Yes, there are Hybrids in Gbury, PK, and Eagle Mountain. No stocking in any of those lakes. Like Dr. Malcom said, life finds a way.