It’s autumn and the big catfish are prowling

One of two 20+ pound blue catfish caught in October 2020.

It happens each autumn—the big catfish of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers start prowling more during daylight hours.

Here’s my theory: young catfish hunt for food most hours of the day for the sake of survival. The more they eat, the bigger they get, and the less likely they will be devoured by predators. But once catfsh get to a certain size —15 pounds? bigger?— they feel less of an imperative to hunt for so many horus of the day. The bigger they get, the more they will be likely to do thier hunting at night.

Why night? Beats me, but those who hunt the monsters tend to advocate going after them during the dark hours. My own biggest catfish (40 pounds), I landed at around 1 am.

Figuring Out the Tides and Water Temperature

Source: http://m.waterdata.usgs.gov/

The federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an online site that provides data on tides and water temperatures: http://tidesonline.noaa.gov/geographic.html. So, for DC’s Potomac River the link is http://tidesonline.noaa.gov/plotcomp.shtml?station_info=8594900++Washington,+DC#.

The mobile-friendly site is at: http://m.waterdata.usgs.gov/.

But Tides4Fishing might have the best mash-up of tide and weather data. Here is the DC link: http://www.tides4fishing.com/us/washington-dc.

And the online consensus seems to be that fishing is worst at both low tide and high tide. E.g., “A slack tide means that the tide is neither incoming nor outgoing and that the water is not moving much. Avoid fishing during times of slack tide and focus on time periods where tidal movement will be most pronounced.”