I decided to go fishing closer to home today for some smallmouth because when I woke up with my alarm set for 2:30 AM to go drive to go crappie fishing I went back to sleep. So I went to the Yakima River to fish for some smallmouth, I went a couple weeks ago and caught a couple so I thought I'd go catch a couple in a few hours. I started fishing around 6:30 AM and there was a boat anchored out fishing for catfish. He said he had been there since 5 PM the day before and had 3 catfish. I was fishing with a jig and within the fourth cast I caught a 2 pound smallmouth. I went about 30 minutes losing a couple jigheads and finally got another bite. I set the hook hard and the line started stripping. I knew right then I had a catfish on based on how the rod was working. I was using my ultralight pole that I use for panfish and bass so I couldn't horse the fish in. I finally got the fish by the shore and was about to bring him in then right when I was doing that, the fish swam in between my legs and started stripping more line as I lifted my pole back up. After about 15 minutes of fighting the fish I brought it in. It would've been a lot easier if I had brought my net down from my car, which I was debating while I was gearing up to walk down to the river. After that, another hour had passed and I didn't muster up any other fish. I ended up losing another smallmouth then another catfish during that time when my line got around a rock and once I had freed it the fish started swimming off and a rock broke the line off. I know that happened because when I re-tied my jig I casted back out and ended up snagging my line and jig and bringing that in. I decided to leave around 8:30 AM and the guy on the boat was bringing in another catfish. Here's a picture of the two fish, my shoe size is 14, so that gives you an idea of how big the catfish was.

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