Catfishing

With one tug of a bank line, Corey Gibson got a reminder of how big the blue and flathead catfish can get in the Missouri River.

As his fishing partner, Roy Myers, maneuvered the boat into the shallows, the line showed little signs of life. But when Gibson started to lift it, the calm water exploded with activity.

A giant blue cat shot to the surface, spraying water in all directions and drenching Gibson. But it wasn’t long before the fish was in a giant net and pulled into the boat.

“That one was a sleeper,” Gibson said as he unhooked the muscle-bound catfish. “He wasn’t pulling on the line or anything. He was just sitting there.”

Gibson laughed and added, “But he didn’t want to come into this boat, that’s for sure.”

Gibson’s team — his wife, Steph, friend Jermyn Porter, his 9-year-old son Owen, and Myers — marveled at the big cat as Gibson lifted it onto a scale.

“OK, Owen, guess how big,” he said.

Owen thought for a second before declaring, “Sixty-two pounds.”

The group looked at the readout on the scale and roared in laughter when the fish finally settled.

“Sixty-two pounds exactly,” Gibson said. “How did you do that?”

The boy shrugged and basked in his new-found attention. Gibson posed for pictures and a video, then eased the big fish back into the muddy water.

A lucky catch? No, it was just business as usual for Gibson and his crew.

They set lines from one end of the portion of the Missouri River that flows through the Show-Me State to the other, and they make a habit of catching giant cats.

This late September day last year was an example. By the time they finished running their bank lines, trotlines, and limblines, they caught and released 12 big flatheads and six large blues, all of them muscular aquatic creatures.

“When I tell other fishermen about the size of fish we catch, some of them won’t believe us. They’ll say, ‘We’re from the Show-Me State. You have to show us,’” said Gibson, 43, who lives in Hallsville and works as a chef at a nearby restaurant. “Then, I’ll tell them to watch our videos on social media, and they’ll see.

“This old river still has a lot of big fish in it. You just have to know where to look.”

Targeting the Big Ones

Gibson and his crew have an uncanny knack of knowing where the big ones can be found.

They fish from April through November, using alternative methods to target Missouri’s legendary catfish. They set lines instead of using rod and reel. And they catch some giants.

“Some people bad-mouth fishermen who run lines,” Gibson said. “They say there’s no skill to it. But they’re wrong.

“You still have to know where to set your lines; where the big ones are going to be. I like getting up close to the fish I catch. I like looking at a map, targeting where I think they will be, putting bank lines out, and going out the next morning to see if I was right.

“That’s my idea of fun. We release all the big ones we catch.”

And they have caught some eye-opening fish. Gibson caught and released a 107-pound blue cat on a bank pole last fall. And he pulled in an 84-pound flathead on a bank pole behind an L dike several years ago.

Myers has played a big part in that success. He met Gibson through Facebook and set up a fishing trip after meeting in person at a catfish tournament. They found success on their first trip, and they’ve been fishing together ever since.

“We’ve fished together long enough that we can read each other’s mind,” Myers said. “We both have a good idea of where to set up our lines.”

On this early fall day, they set many of their bank poles at the tips of wing dikes and along mud banks behind L dikes. They also set lines near logs and woody cover where flatheads like to hide.

This was just the start of one of their favorite times of the year to fish. As the water cools, they like to fish the holes behind dikes where shad often gather.

“They’re gorging on shad, feeding up for winter, and you can really catch some big fish,” Gibson said.

The Keys to Success

Big bait, big fish. That’s Gibson and Myers’ motto.

They leave the small minnows for other anglers. They often use common carp or bullheads as big as 1½ pounds or giant goldfish. They have an aerated tank in the back of Gibson’s truck capable of holding 200 baitfish.

They use 12-foot-long fiberglass bank poles that are secured by drilling holes in banks, rocks, or logs. They use 8- to 10-ounce weights, heavy duty braided line, and 10- to 20-ought circle hooks.

That might sound extreme to many anglers, but Gibson and Myers are going after giant fish.

“Our goal is to catch an alternative-methods state record for either flathead or blue cats,” Myers said. “They’re out there.”

The alternative-methods mark stood at 120 pounds, 8 ounces for blue catfish and 100 pounds for flatheads as of last fall. 

They use trotlines of varying length, depending on the time of the year and the conditions. On this trip, they used one of their longer lines, stretching 100 feet before the first hook.

“We want to reach out to the mud flat right at the edge of the main channel, where they’ll move up to feed,” Gibson said.

They follow MDC regulations allowing them 33 hooks per angler, labeling their lines with either their name and address or their conservation ID numbers, and checking their lines at least once every 24 hours.

“You don’t want a fish hanging there too long,” Gibson said. “We care about the resource. It takes a long time for some of these catfish to get that big. We release the big ones so someone else can have fun catching them sometime.”

They’ve Come a Long Way

After years on the water, Gibson now knows the ways of Missouri River catfish. But it wasn’t always that way. He remembers years of frustration before finally learning.

“When I was just getting started, I tried fishing with rod and reel from the bank, but I didn’t catch much,” he said. “I was getting discouraged, so I started hanging out at a local bait shop and asking questions.

“Finally, I tagged along with a couple of them and just watched what they were doing as they set lines. I learned how they did it and the tackle they used. I owe a lot to those guys for getting me started.”

From there, a lot of time on the water paid off. There was a lot of trial and error, but eventually Gibson learned where to set his lines.

“I became obsessed with catching big catfish,” he said. “They’re at the top of the food chain out here. They’re so powerful and put up such a great fight. There’s nothing like them.”

The scientific view

Silver carp are widely known as the scourge of large river systems because of their productivity and threat of competing with the young of native species for plankton.

But in an odd twist, they may be helping the catfish population grow stronger by providing an additional forage species.

“The silver carp tend to spawn in high-water events,” said Adam McDaniel, a fisheries scientist for MDC. “They’ll put a bunch of offspring out there; a big influx of small fish that grow really fast that the catfish can capitalize on.

“I’d say the silver carp are now a major part of the catfish’s forage base.”

But other factors have played major roles in the growing population of big fish in the Missouri River.

The prohibition of commercial fishing on the Missouri River is now more than 30 years old, and it continues to have positive effects on the catfish populations. Regulations for recreational anglers — such as the number of hooks allowed each angler (33), tighter bag limits, and a rising catch-and-release ethic — have helped, too.

“It takes 20 years or more for a blue or a flathead to grow to 50, 60 pounds,” McDaniel said. “We’re seeing more and more people release those big ones to grow even larger. Our population of big fish is definitely better than it used to be. They’re definitely more common than they used to be.”

A Team with a Following

How many bank-line anglers do you know that have sponsors? Gibson and his wife, Steph, do.

Before they met in 2013, Steph had never been catfishing. 

“It just wasn’t something I could picture myself doing,” said Steph, a housekeeper for the University of Missouri.

But she started tagging along with Corey and began videoing their adventures. When she posted one of the segments on her social media account, she and Corey were amazed at the response.

“I posted a video of Corey catching a 62-pound blue cat on my TikTok account and it just blew up,” she said. “We got 300,000 views.”

That was the start of something big for the Gibsons. Ever since that trip, they have been posting social media videos of Corey, Myers, and Steph pulling in giant river catfish under their “Corey and Steph” title and they’ve attracted thousands of followers.

They’ve even attracted sponsors that help with the cost of bait, equipment, and travel expenses. But mostly, they just enjoy the challenge of setting lines for some of Missouri’s biggest fish.

“I don’t care how many times I do it, I still get excited catching a big blue or flathead,” Gibson said.