Fly fishing?

I've got a three day prairie river trip planned for September. My buddy Patrick will fly over from Australia.

I got a whole frozen pork skin from a local butchering operation West of town. Will cut it up into strips and mount them on a snell, with swivel up front, like a Carolina or maybe Texas worm rig. Then put them in a vacuum canister with a bottle of salmon egg juice and suck the air out so the salmon egg juice marinates deeply into the soft wet pork skin. Let it sit for a few days--still in the vacuum canister--and then re-freeze it, so I have sandwich bags with 2 or 3 pork/worm rigs per bag.

Why? Channel catfish. On the fly rod. I'll fish them with a big 1/4" inch Tungsten bead in front of the rig, with a heavy but loooong leader, so I can get depth when I need it. I've done this before. I love it. I caught one 25" inches last time and it almost broke my six weight fly rod. I'll use a bigger 8wt bonefish rod this time around. My buddy Patrick hooked and lost one so big it towed the boat for a while.


https://montana-riverboats.com/?robopage=Flies/Sandy-Pittendrigh/Articles/Catfish-on-flies

Will they also bite dry flies? Probably not this one:

.........maybe a mouse pattern?

Dad caught a nice 6-7 pound catfish on a crawfish pattern I tie 2 springs ago. Same trip I got a nice 3 foot longnose gar. As for dry flies....we have a huge mayfly hatch, likely a hex variant in the spring and we catch 10-15 pound grass carp on dries out of kayaks regularly. They feed with abandon during the hatch and pod up so there may be 50 fish in a pod. But I'd load up any day of the week and drive across the country to catch a 15" trout! Why is that?? Good luck with your catfishing Sandy, sounds like a blast. Those dudes put up a great fight!

:=))

The closest public place I can park, walk to the stream and catch a trout is less than 5 minutes from my door. I still love trout fishing. But I do tend to take it for granted. The grass is greener, and the fish are more enviable, always on the other side of the fence? Or maybe in the river that's a little harder to get to.