Less than half a mile from the Ararat River in Ararat, NC hides a tiny little public catfish pond. It might not be listed on Google, but you can pull through the gravel round-about, stuff a 10 dollar bill in the old mailbox contraption and legally fish for a day.
I was turned off from public catfish ponds after 3 or 4 completely fruitless attempts when I was in my early twenties. I had a brother or friend with me on each trip, we each had at least 2 rods (as I recall) and we used a variety of baits between the 4 rods. All of these fishing "expeditions" were at different public catfish ponds, I'll add.
We caught nothing. Never even got a bite.
So, when a buddy of mine seemed excited about going to a pay-to-fish catfish pond up in the woods, I was a little more than skeptical. He produced his cell phone and showed me a photo of a flathead catfish that was easily 45 pounds, caught at the same pond the summer before.
CJ's flathead from our first fishing trip together in the summer of 2022.
Later that afternoon, he directed me through some winding country roads in central/northern NC and we found ourselves at a small, public catfish lake. CJ set up a Carolina rig with a live, 5-inch bluegill and I set up with some cutbait under a bobber.
The action started about 30 minutes after our lines got wet.
CJ's reel started hollerin' at us so he picked up his rod and let the fish really get acquainted with the bait. When he finally started reeling, the fish started pulling hard. After a few minutes, he landed the flathead pictured above.
I wasn't fishing the bottom like CJ was, so I had been concerned that perhaps my bobber rig might not get bit. However, after dark, my cutbait finally started getting some attention. I hooked up with 3 fish over the course of about 45 minutes and managed to land 2 of them.
My first fish of the night was roughly 7 or 8 pounds.
My second fish of the night was probably closer to 10 pounds.
Needless to say, I became a fan of live bluegill from that night on. Later that summer and into the next summer, cut bait consistently produced 5 to 12-pound fish, and live bluegill consistently produced 10 to 20-pound fish. Another friend of mine caught her largest fish from the same pond with live bluegill. You can check out the YouTube video here.
A 9-pound flathead catfish hauled out of the same pond in June of 2023.
In the past year and a half or so, the pond has become increasingly productive for carp and for me personally, less productive for catfish. I've fished it twice in 2024 with no results, so perhaps it's transitioning into a carp pond. I did catch a blue catfish using a sliver of venison as bait, but this was in the summer of 2023.
This 11-pound blue catfish was caught using venison as cut bait. The fish didn't seem to mind the rain.
