Fished last night with Zack at the Mullet Lake river bank, using cut shad, mullet and bluegill. We stayed for about 3 hours and I only managed to catch a little 11oz channel catfish on cut shad. I wanted to cook it the next day so we kept it alive in the bucket until we reached the store to ice it down. We had bite activity but most were short quick bites. I almost had another fish on cut mullet but halfway during the fight it let go, most likely a gar or bowfin.
I needed a small deep fryer to make it easier to cook my catfish, so I went to Walmart to purchase a Presto FryDaddy for about $20. It only requires 4 cups of oil and you can store the used oil inside the deep fryer so you can use it again. I soaked the fillets in milk for about 30 minutes to help remove some of the fishy and muddy flavor, then coated them with Italian style bread crumbs. The frying process only took about 2 minutes once the fish were in the oil as these were thin fillets. They tasted very good though and I will definitly use the bread crumbs again. It's not as messy as making beer batter too.
Location: Mullet Lake Park, St Johns river bank
Tackle: Gamakatsu 6/0 octopus circle hook on a Carolina rig
Species: Channel Catfish
Weight: 11 oz
Bait: cut shad
