[motor revs]
- NARRATOR: Clancy Terrill and his friend, Richard Burrage...
- Not finding any?
- NARRATOR: ...are chasing cats--
- No.
- NARRATOR: Catfish, that is -- all around Lake Buchanan.
[crickets chirping]
Though their day began awfully early...
- Watch your head.
- ...it also started slowly.
- CLANCY: C'mon fish.
- NARRATOR: There has been a bite or two...
- CLANCY: There he is.
- NARRATOR: And there has been some good-natured ribbing...
- CLANCY: You jerked it like a girl!
- RICHARD: No!
- NARRATOR: ...but so far there haven't been many catfish.
[catfish croaking] - RICHARD: He's talking to you.
- CLANCY: Nice little blue. See how pretty they are?
- NARRATOR: It's the big ones
that Clancy is known for catching.
- I guide for trophy catfish.
[splash]
- NARRATOR: In order to attract these fish...
- Anchors aweigh.
- NARRATOR: ...some 40 feet down Clancy and Richard
serve up a variety of smelly baits.
- My wife says, "I can tell when you've been catfishing."
[chuckles]
[reel whirring]
- RICHARD: All right, there's one.
- NARRATOR: The fresh shad seem more attractive
to another fish today.
- CLANCY: Oh, it's a striper.
- NARRATOR: Clancy guides for striped bass as well.
- CLANCY: That's good, Richard.
That's about a three to four year striper.
If you can get the stripers out of your way,
you'll probably catch some catfish.
[music]
- RICHARD: Catfish are going to be next.
- CLANCY: Get him, Richard.
- NARRATOR: With some persistence, Clancy and Richard
find what they've been fishing for.
- CLANCY: Catfish!
[fish croaks]
[energetic music]
- Woohoo!
It ain't big fish, but it's something.
[splashes]
- NARRATOR: And they'll be back to catch the big one
another day.
- CLANCY: It's just a lot of fun.
- RICHARD: Especially if it's a big one.
[boat revving]
- NARRATOR: While some folks just enjoy catching catfish,
others will literally line up to eat them.
- We got the catfish.
I think it's worth the wait.
Let's see.
There you go!
- Catfish is a great fish.
- Mmmm. That's good.
[zydeco music]
- NARRATOR: One weekend each Fall,
the Conroe Cajun Catfish Festival turns Conroe,
just north of Houston, into a capital of zydeco music
and all things catfish.
- Woooaaahhh!
Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go!
- KEITH MILLER: It's about everybody coming downtown
and enjoying the catfish and all the food vendors
and all the great Cajun music, and everybody
having a good time.
- CARL BOSTICK: Right now, well you know,
catfish is a year-round thing.
- NARRATOR: The festival is also a chance for local fishing
guides, like Carl Bostick, to meet a few new customers,
and show off some Lake Conroe catfish.
- We get asked every year to come in and bring some fish
and the kids love it.
You can't keep their hands out of the water where the fish are.
- Whoa! That scared me...
- NARRATOR: Soon after the festival, Carl is back
on Lake Conroe...
- CARL: I think it's the best catfish lake in the state.
- NARRATOR: ...Not with clients but with friends.
- CARL: That's what I do on my days off.
- NARRATOR: The two boats are out for an evening
of jug fishing.
- Jugging, you're increasing your odds a whole lot
because you can put up to five hooks on a jug,
and, depending on how many people you have out there,
you could have hundreds of hooks work an area.
- MORRIS: Fish it.
[splash]
[GPS beeps]
- The GPS is really nice- great little tool for us
to track where we put them, and find each jug.
- NARRATOR: Even the jugs themselves have gone high tech.
- MORRIS: These are what we call flagging jugs.
Whenever a fish pulls on the line, he'll slide the
counter-weight to the bottom, and then we know it has
a fish on it or something's hit it.
DONALD: Toss it, Steven.
- NARRATOR: By the time the boats have anchored all their
hooks in the water...
[GPS beep]
DONALD: That's all of them.
- NARRATOR: Some of the jugs have already flagged.
- DONALD: There's one back to our left.
- STEVEN: Yeah, he's on here.
[fish netting]
There you go.
- DONALD: Nice little blue cat.
- NARRATOR: Catfish are caught...
hooks are re-baited...
and jugs are returned.
[splash]
The circuit continues non-stop.
And as night falls, the ice chest fills.
[zydeco music]
- DONALD: If you want to make a fish haul,
jugging's a way of doing it.
- NARRATOR: Jugging is also a good way to find the big cats.
- I think we have a decent fish coming up here.
- NARRATOR: Pulling in a large catfish can require
a little bit of teamwork.
- MORRIS: You've got about a 20-pounder, coming up.
That's it.
[struggles and groans]
- WAYNE SAUNDERS: It's just fun to come out and see how many
of the big ones you can catch.
- MORRIS: How much does he weigh, George?
- GEORGE: I don't know.
[laughs]
- We really enjoy it.
- NARRATOR: The thrill of catching a trophy fish
does not require keeping it.
- GEORGE: Twenty-eight, twenty-six four.
- WAYNE: Take a picture of him and turn him loose.
Let him grow.
Maybe next year he'll weigh five more pounds.
- NARRATOR: So Morris, Wayne and George have their own
policy regarding these big and most-productive fish.
[camera click]
They keep only a photo...
[straining and laughter]
- ...and they keep a good story, too.
- WAYNE: They wanna twist when they get in that water.
- MORRIS: Well that's a good start for the evening.
- GEORGE: [sighs] Yeah.
- NARRATOR: Increasing interest in catching catfish
in large numbers or sizes has also increased the need
for studying catfish.
- DAVE BUCKMEIER: As the interests change,
obviously the management has to change.
- MAN: C'mon fishies, c'mon little fishies.
- NARRATOR: Nearby on Lake Livingston
biologists are learning how to measure populations
of catfish species, more accurately.
- WARREN SCHLECHTE: It does get fairly fast-paced.
I've frequently heard it referred to as
a rodeo kind of collection.
- Up front, front right, Dave.
- DAVE: As you pump electricity into the water,
it ends up stunning fish.
This has been known for a long time,
poachers did it in the past.
We can do it legally, whereas others can't.
It's a very efficient method.
We needed thousands of fish to be collected, tagged,
and then released to get the answers we were looking for.
- 399.
- Got it.
- WARREN: The marking was specific to certain fin clip
combinations, so when we recaptured the fish we could
tell where that fish came from.
A few fish were kept for some other samples,
for aging and those kinds of things.
- 798.
- WARREN: Ultimately standard sampling protocols will be
developed from that.
- NARRATOR: As biologists get a better picture of catfish
populations in reservoirs and rivers, they can better
keep catfish healthy, and anglers happy.
- Whether you want to take some fish home to eat or whether
you want to try and catch a trophy, that's kind of the goal
in all of it is to make sure those opportunities
are there for everyone, across the state.
- BRETT: Mine's bigger.
- CARL: I don't know, mine's bigger.
- NARRATOR: That means Carl and his friends should always
be able to go fishing for cats.
- We got us a cat fight going on!
[laughs]
- If I can be on this water, I'm gonna be on this water,
whether it's a job or not, I'm gonna be fishing.
- MORRIS: Oooh boy.
You got another nice one.
[splashing]
[George straining]
- NARRATOR: Whether on a hook...
- A little bit of a workout.
- ...on the menu, or on their own.
There is just something fun about catfish.
- CARL: I've always been a cat fisherman.
You know, they say we're a breed of our own, and everybody
has their favorites, but on this lake that would be mine.
- GEORGE: He's not very happy about all this.
- MORRIS: Thirty-five?
That's a pretty one.
Okay.
- CARL: I love it.
[splash]