After working at his pest control job on Feb. 17, Aaron Riggins decided to head to his home fishing waters – 56,000-acre Lake Hartwell, which is only a few minutes’ drive from his home in Anderson, South Carolina.
“I got home from work and saw I had some leftover cut carp baits from fishing, so I decided to spend the afternoon at a favorite spot of mine on Hartwell,” said the 27-year-old angler. “It’s a place on the Seneca River arm of the reservoir where I’ve caught some giant blue cats in previous years.”
He’s fished Hartwell all his life, but just started targeting big blue cats five years ago. In that time, he’s caught many catfish that would explode the official lake record — a 30.8 pound fish caught back in 2003. But Riggins releases his oversize cats soon after he catches them to avoid stressing them on a trip to a certified weigh station.
It was a mild-weather afternoon with a light wind on Feb. 17 when Riggins launched his 16-foot V-hull aluminum Sea Nymph boat. He outboarded to a large 30-foot deep flat near a drop-off to the main channel of the Seneca River arm on Hartwell and started fishing.
He used two planer boards each with two lines attached to medium-action catfish rods with revolving spool reels. Two rod-reel setups for the planers are positioned on the boat’s port and starboard sides. He also slow trolls with a pair of flat lines having baits off the boat stern near his 90 hp outboard. Two-inch square chunks of fresh carp meat are baited on 10/0 circle hooks, with 50-pound monofilament lines and 60-pound test mono leaders.
He uses his boat’s electric motor to slow troll until he finds fish.
His first trolling pass along the 3-to-6-foot river drop from the flat resulted in three “small” catfish for Riggins: two fish, each weighing about 30 pounds, he said. The fish came from a slight turn in the drop-off break-line over a 150-yard stretch of river.
“It was getting late, and I figured the 150-yard area was where the fish were stacked up,” Riggins explained. “That’s when I decided to run back up to the area where I started and make another trolling pass where the cats and baitfish were showing on my fathometer.
“It had rained earlier, and the 54.5-degree water was muddy. But the wind was pushing bait up onto the flat, and the cats were chewin’.”
As he trolled near the turn in the drop-off where he’d caught his three catfish earlier, another fish hit a rod off a planer board. He was on his phone talking to a friend when the fish hit, but quickly ended the conversation when he realized the fish was huge.
For 10 minutes he battled the big cat, with the fish pulling deep under the boat, but finally he got it close and somehow got the oversize blue into his landing net.
“It took me longer to get the catfish in my net than it did to fight the blue and whip it,” said Riggins.
He keeps a 110-pound scale in his boat designed for accurate weighing of catfish — Riggins weighed the fish at 75 pounds. His prior biggest Hartwell blue catfish was a 74-pounder he caught two years ago.
While he was weighing his big cat, another fish hit, so he picked up that rod and battled the cat. He boated that catfish, and during the fight a third fish hit and he fought and boated the third fish.
“I was alone, and rods are being slammed one after another,” he said. “I was freaking out trying to fight fish, net them and get them in the boat before grabbing another rod and fighting that fish.
“I got some photos of me holding the 75-pounder, and with all three fish on my boat deck. That’s when a fourth catfish hit a bait and I boated that one, too.”
The second and third catfish each weighed 40 to 50 pounds, Riggins said. The fourth and final catfish was a more modest 20-pounder. The aggregate total of those four catfish weighed a conservatively 185 pounds. Riggins promptly released all of them.
Then he ran his boat back to the ramp and headed for home.
“I don’t really care about catching an official Hartwell record blue catfish,” he said. “And I’m sure not gonna kill those big ol fish just to prove what they weighed. I shoot a lot of pictures, and I’d rather have photos of those heavy cats than taxidermy mounts. Heck, catching those big cats is all about braggin’ rights anyhow.”
