Fishing Report: Large catfish reeled in at Santa Margarita

[John Barron]

By Wayne Shaw
“It’s not often you’ll find fishermen scared to put their hand into the mouth of a fish,” admitted Mark Rodriguez of Paso Robles. It happened to him July 2 at Santa Margarita Lake while he was fishing with Jason Buchanan of Paso Robles.

“We were flipping bass tackle at the mouth of the Salinas River when we connected with a gigantic catfish,” Rodriguez said. “It took us about 10 minutes to get it up to the boat.

“We didn’t have a net. Besides, no net I own would have handled this fish. Jason and I estimated it weighed between 30 and 40 pounds. It was huge. Neither of us wanted to put a hand in that fish’s mouth. We took pictures and let it go.”

Rodriguez, 45, and Buchanan, 41, are veteran fishermen who are planning to return to bass tournament competition next year.

Rodriguez’s experience should inspire some catfish aficionados to pursue that fish. Because if the catfish was big as Rodriguez claims, it would have been a Santa Margarita Lake record. San Luis Obispo’s Nathan Gray holds the record when he caught a 29-pound, 8-ounce catfish April 16, 2007.

The heaviest catfish caught in the five local lakes is a 40-pounder caught by Bob Williams of Inglewood at Lopez Lake on Sept. 24, 1992.

[Oldschool]

Sticking a big cat will happen if you bass fish long enough.
My son hook a 26 lb cat at Castaic on a split shot reaper when he about 9, we still talk about that epic battle.
I managed to stick a big cat with a jig under the pectral fin and was convinced it was a WR bass. The big channel cat was over 48" long and I made the mistake of putting it in the boat on the back deck to retrieve my custom hand tied hair jig. The fish slimmed up everything and knocked my pliers overboard, almost breaking my wrist.
Tom