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When I was at culinary school on the Hudson, we heard lots of talk of people getting big stipers on the river. Not knowing that most of them came during the spring, and as we were very poor students, we hit the river with gusto.
We caught lots and lots of white perch...in 1994 the popular theories said stripers in the Hudson were caught on nighcrawlers, so we fished with worms.
Anyhow, we decided to all head home and pick up our surf rods to hit the big boys once and for all...We bought four cases of Mickey's Big mouth Malt Liquor and headed down to the river with hi-low rigs, baited with live small white perch.
Two fruitless hours into the ordeal, one of my buddies' rods doubles over...a cheer erupts from the very drunken crowd. The way the drag screamed, we figured it was at least a thirty pounder!!!
As we were very tipsy, and very high up on a concrete promontory left over from the days of the big docks on the river, it took a while to get the fish in...In the setting sun of October we saw the fish...The absolute biggest catfish, fat and mutated from PCB's (I'm guessing) that any of us had ever seen.
Anyhow, all of us tough guys were too chicken to unhook the thing (it was really, really ugly).
Anyhow, I stepped up to bat, got it loose, and let it go...It was the last time we went fishing!
Later,
Rick
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