Full Moon Catfishing: Yak Tribe Tournament Day 6

My sixth attempt at fishing for the Yak Tribe tournament was a lazy one. I went out on 6-9-17 to do a little night fishing. There was a full moon on that particular night so I didn't have high expectations when I left the house. I have never done particularly well on the full moon and the fact that we are now into June and water temps have heated up to spawning levels didn't help my confidence either. I usually don't do a lot of catfishing in the month of June. Its not that you can't catch fish during this month as I caught my personal best blue cat in the kayak during early June a few years ago. Its just that I don't feel it is the best use of my time to target trophy cats this time of year due to so many being uncatchable while they are spawning. I usually just target other species during this time period. This year is different, however, since I am competing in this tournament. In a month long tournament, every day matters so I am fishing every chance I get in an effort to improve my score.

I had decided to anchor down on a spot and sit there until I got too sleepy to fish. I was fishing at a creek mouth where I knew fish would be moving in and out of throughout the night. Surprisingly, I caught my first fish within about 20-30 minutes of being anchored down. I quickly caught two more fish in short order right after that. All three of those fish were caught on cut white bass. My bait struggles this month have continued so I was using cut white bass and live bluegill on this night. My biggest blue on the cut white bass was 35" which was big enough to cull one of my previous submissions. It also qualified for a TARP (Tennessee Angler Recognition Program) award although I don't participate in that program. I am just way too cheap to be sending in $5 every time I catch a big fish.

After about an hour and a half, a barge came through which forced me to move. I decided that instead of anchoring back in the same spot, I would slide on down and fish an old submerged bridge. I ended up anchoring down there the rest of the evening. I caught three more blue cats on live bluegill at that particular spot. The biggest was 32" which was also big enough to cull one of my previous submissions.

I ended up calling quits around 1am. I was tired and the current had slacked off which really hurt the fishing. The night ended up going much better than I had anticipated. I caught a total of 6 blue cats and had two that were big enough to replace previous submissions which added 9" to my score. That brings my total for the tournament thus far to 286". The tournament ends on June 15th and I am going to continue on to try to break the 300" mark. Here are the video highlights of the night.