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Fishing Stories from Ned Kehde |
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Submitted by Ned Kehde - May 20, 2000 To call Steve Hoffman an ardent and talented catfish angler might be an understatement. In fact, he has been described as intelligent, meticulous, inventive, adaptable, tenacious, industrious, astute, enthusiastic, inquisitive, respectful, skillful and patient. And that is quite a string of superlatives to attach to a cat fisherman who is only 32 years old. What's more, Hoffman is also the editor of In-Fisherman's Catfish In-Sider magazine, which readers hail as the most progressive piscatorial publication around. Observers say that Hoffman and his In-Fisherman mentor, Doug Stange, have taken cat fishing to these new heights by building on the observations of savvy old-timers, such as of Tom Burns of Lawrence, and borrowing some of the tactics employed by musky, bass, walleye, steelhead and saltwater anglers. According to Hoffman, cat fishing will experience scores of permutations and advancements during the next decade. For instances, Hoffman says that the tackle industry will soon be manufacturing soft- and hard-plastic lures for catfish. Some of these artificial lures, which will replicate a small carp or big gizzard shad, will be even be laced with an amino acid or a combination of such acids that blue, channel and flathead catfish relish. In addition, there will be a variety of rods built for cat anglers to use when employing the new styles of catfish angling. A couple weeks ago, Hoffman drove here from In-Fisherman's headquarters in Brainerd, Minn. He came here to test some old and new waters and methods in eastern Kansas and western Missouri. On Monday morning of that week, he and a friend helped John Thompson of Ottawa check his log lines at Clinton Lake. A week before Hoffman's visit Thompson caught and released five flathead that weighed as little as 55 pounds to as much as 74 pounds. But on this morning, three days of ornery weather had turned the cats sullen, and Thompson's lines were barren. After the run with Thompson, Hoffman and his friend visited Tom Burns for a spell. And Burns regaled them with tales about his 60 years of chasing the denizens of the Kansas River. Before that visit drew to a close, Burns gave Hoffman many relics from his days as the Kaw's grandest angler. Some of those artifacts Hoffman will employ in Minnesota to catch bullheads, which he will use as bait for catching flatheads. Upon leaving Burn's place, Hoffman and his friend traveled south to Oswego, where they fished for flatheads on the Neosho River with Renee Shumway of Topeka, who had caught a 78-pound flathead three days before Hoffman's arrival. From late afternoon to dawn, they worked a variety of holes and logjams with a classical presentation of big bluegills on stout casting tackle. But that same vile weather that had foiled Thompson's fishing at Clinton fouled the fishing at the Neosho. Around 7 a.m., Hoffman and his friend left the Neosho and headed to the upper portions of the Lake of the Ozarks. They reached the boat ramp at Warsaw, Mo., at noon and launched Hoffman's boat. Then for the next three days and parts of three nights, this duo unleashed an assortment of nontraditional tactics on the flatheads. For hours, they worked with big musky rods and reels that were spooled with 50-pound Berkley FireLine and a 50-pound Big Game leader attached with a Bimini and braid-leader knots, and they trolled musky and bass lures such as The Believer and Mann's 30+ in 15 to 35 feet of water. To break the monotony of trolling, they probed drop-offs with two-ounce jigheads that sported six- and nine-inch soft-plastic fish bodies. After that they drifted the flats and channel edges with cut-bait rigs sporting such unconventional paraphernalia as Scott Eno's Sand Bag and a Spin 'n' Glow. And eventually, they caught and released the one the Hoffman came for: a 60-pound flathead, which will appear with a Mann's 30+ in its jowl in a coming edition of Catfish In-Sider. |
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