Wild Ride

?Jason? you?ve got to come down here and see this fish? I don?t know how big it is but it?s the biggest dang fish I?ve ever seen in my life!? Cody yelled over the cell phone to his best friend and 5-year fishing partner Jason Holbrook. ?I just caught a 56-pounder and this big fish looks like it could eat it!?

Cody: ?I called everybody I could think of; Jason was at work but I called anyway and got ahold of his wife. She brought the video camera down and we taped the fish ? We were perty excited to say the least. The fish bottomed out Jason?s 100-pound scale and we knew we had to get it to the bait shop to get it weighed in a hurry.?

After Cody talked to Jason a chain of events started to unfold. Holbrook called all their fishin buddies and they left work to come down to the lake and help out with the fish. Jason brought his brother Josh, Steve Nelson who often fished with the group arrived as did Mickey Petree. They all knew that if they were going to keep the fish alive and release it back to the lake they needed to move fast. Steve helped Cody load the fish into the ?pole buggy? and take it to the truck while Jason and Josh pitched in and gathered up Cody?s fishing gear. Meanwhile Mickey called his friend Dale Moses who is a Texas Game Warden and told him to meet them at the Tackle Box ?a near by baitshop.

After weighing the huge fish, Cody, Steve, and Jason wrestled it into one of the concrete minnow vats at the bait shop. ?The fish was doing good once we put her in the minnow tank and she could rest over the bubbler. I knew that she could be out of water longer since it was winter than she could have if it were the hot summer. Looking back on it, I would have released her right then if it was hot water when I caught her.?

Game warden, Dale Moses told Cody and the boys about the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center and that they could donate the fish so everyone had a chance to see the fish. They all figured that it would be a good thing for catfishing and that it would help spread the word about keeping trophy-sized blues alive. ?Fish like this should be protected because they are rare fish. Too many 70?s, 80?s, and bigger fish are killed before they can reach this size.? The TFFC fish transport truck arrived within the hour and the boys helped them transfer the 121 pound fish and off it went to its new home in Athens Texas. Cody says that he wasn?t sure what happened next, but he started to get barraged by phone

Calls from all over the country asking about the new World Record blue cat.

Call after call came in from people wanting to talk to talk to Cody about his amazing catch. ?I was talking to one reporter and I?ll bet I missed 40 calls in that same hour.? According to Mullennix, some of the people calling him just wanted to hear about the 121-pound fish and missed the real story altogether. ?I?m just a guy who caught a big blue. The real story is about people fishing for catfish and the excitement they get from catching big fish. People need to know that catchin big fish isn?t something that happens everyday and we should respect and release big catfish to do their thing.?

Lifelong Dream

Cody had been fishing with his Dad, for as long as he can remember. ?I love to fish. My Dad used to take me fishing all the time as a kid? I can remember being on the water in his old 16-foot Jon boat at 8 years old? whitecaps rollin off the lake? I loved it and I?m glad that he shared his love for fishin with me. I always dreamt of catching a huge fish someday and now look what?s happened.?

Cody and his Dad, Bill Mullennix, fished for all species of fish over the years but Cody gravitated towards catfish more and more especially after meeting Jason Holbrook who broke the 1993 Texas State Record with an 85-pound blue cat. ?Jason has really helped me catch more and bigger fish. He reads all sorts of magazines and is constantly trying new things. We started fishin together long about 89? and have been good friends ever since.?

Cody and Jason fished together every chance they got and spent tons of time on the water. They started realizing that really big blues were hard to come by and they began taking photos and then releasing every fish over 20 pounds.

One look at Jason?s mountain of photos, newspaper clippings, magazine stacks, and then peer into his fishing journals and you know he is a catfish fanatic. He breaks into a giant smile and rattles on about catfishing like a wide-eyed kid after going to Sea World for the first time. He is full of questions about how cats behave? what they do when its cold, hot, how they eat, how often the cats stay in deeper water and how often they will move shallow to feed. For as many questions as he has, he knows the important answers to the catfish mystery. He knows that catfish don?t always feed, don?t always move around, and big cats don?t feed every day. ?We know that these blues on Texoma move around and feed some days and some days they don?t do much. One day we will catch a few or none, then the next day we will catch 20 to 80 fish using the same tactic.? Jason reminds us that fishing from shore can be frustrating at times when the fish are inactive, especially when you?ve got a lot of gear to move. ?The guys we fish with are no stranger to hard work; they are construction workers who are out in rough weather all the time. When the fish aren?t biting in one spot a few of us will take some gear and set up sometimes a half a mile away. If they get on fish, more of us will move that way. If the fishin is slow and we don?t move, will fill our time by having casting contests between bites. We?re always working on our casting distances. If you don?t get your baits out to at least the first ledge, sometimes you?ll never get a bite and sometimes that means wading out 50 yards then making a 100-yard cast or better.?

Learning as they go:

These guys are serious catters. Starting with Jason and Cody, they have recently been joined by Mickey Petree who is involved heavily with the National Wildlife Turkey Federation whose main goal is to restore the once depleted turkey population back into the wild. ?I can see the need for releasing big blues and I really haven?t been into it all that long. It really compares with what we?re getting accomplished with the turkey population. The main thing about these blues in Texoma is that we want to prevent the big fish from being harvested so heavily that the chances of landing a really big fish gets slimmer with time as more and more people fish for them. It?s all about people being able to catch what they want? and it seems to me that catching one big fish is a huge thing to a lot of catfishermen.?

Bill Mullennix: When talking with Bill its plain to see he is one proud father. ?Cody called me as soon as he caught that fish? man was he excited. He?s usually a pretty quiet kid but that morning he was talking a mile a minute. I could tell he had accomplished something he had been dreaming about. When I got to the bait shop where they took the fish, Cody and Jason were ecstatic! Lookin back on it, those two were always talking about catching a really huge catfish. They knew they were going to catch a World Record, they just didn?t know when. Now they?re talking about catchin an even bigger one!

Nothin keeps them kids from goin fishin? cold, sleet, snow, wind, or rain these kids flat out go fishin. I can remember one time I went with them and we were throwin our baits over 50 yards of ice to get to the open water. My baits would hit the ice and slide just far enough to reach open water.

?This is a dream come true.? Cody told the media at the press conference held at the TFFC in Athens Texas. I feel so lucky to have caught this fish I want others to have the same chance, that?s why I think the message about releasing these big fish has got to get out.? ?I?m glad the people here at the TFFC really know what they?re doing with this big catfish. I was feeling like I should have released her but now that I see her in here I know she?s doin alright and that people can see that releasing a big fish like this can be done. After a bunch of folks get to see her, we will release her back into the lake.? Cody told reporters. ?I hope the next World Record is kept alive and returned. Wouldn?t that be something.? While their fishing strategy is simple, they are a close group of friends driven by the pursuit of big fish. Day in and day out, whatever the weather or level of the lake, these guys fish for big blues. They get out there and try new things, build special carts to carry their specialized gear. Their baits, rigs, rods, and reels are all an integral part of the puzzle, but for these guys, the secret to catching big cats is their love for catfishing and the time they spend going after the monster fish they are passionate about.

Cody, Jason, Steve, Hunter, Mickey, and Jason are all members of the PCA at Procats.com and we will be stopping by from time to time to see how their catfishing excursions are going. We will be featuring all sorts of catfishing tactics from around the country in the pages of Procats Magazine including bank-angling tactics that work on big fish anywhere they swim.

By Tim Scott