March 24 was a fishing day that Saul and Kali Perez had been planning for several years. The Wentzville family heard about huge blue catfish being caught from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers near St. Louis, so they decided spring break would be the perfect time to get on the water with their two kids.
The Perezes had booked a day on the water with Capt. Wally Maier, who runs Show Me Catfishing Trophy Guide Service. Air temperatures were in the 40s, so the family dressed accordingly.
“It was cold and overcast that early morning and we were all wearing winter clothes and snowpants,” Kali tells Outdoor Life. She says it was the first time they’d fished with a guide as a family. “But we started catching catfish right away and that warmed us up.”
Their youngest, 8-year-old Reese, started out on the rod, Kali says. But after losing two fish back-to-back, it was 9-year-old Rhett’s turn. He hooked and landed a 7-pound channel cat in no time.
“It was supposed to be my turn to catch the next catfish,” Kali explains. “But Reese was pouting about losing his first two fish after his brother caught one, so we decided to let him catch the next fish.”
He’d get his chance around 8:30 a.m., when a rod bowed over in the one of the rod holders on Capt. Maier’s 26-foot aluminum boat. Reese grabbed the reel handle and felt the biggest fish of his young life.
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“It was really hard to reel it in,” says Reese. He had caught some panfish and a few large bass before, but nothing that prepared him for the slug fest he was now in.
The big blue went deep in the swift current and held there. Reese started out reeling on the fish while the rod was still in the rod holder on the boat’s gunnel. But the fish was wearing him out, and he couldn’t get enough leverage to gain any line back.
After joking with Reese that “he can’t tap out,” Capt. Maier stepped in to help the kid re-position himself. He pulled the rod from the gunnel-mounted rod holder, put Reese in a boat seat, and then gave him back the rod. With a guiding hand from his dad, the young angler was able to pump and reel and get the big catfish close enough for Maier to net it.
On a scale that Maier had aboard, the fish weighed just a fraction of an ounce under 60 pounds. Reese, of course, wanted to hold his catch, and a video shows him struggling to cradle the bulbous blue cat — beaming from underneath a winter stocking cap.
Maier then helped Reese release the catfish by dropping it over the side of the boat and back into the river. Maier says they release all their catfish over 10 pounds. Luckily the family was able to catch a few smaller fish that afternoon, and Kali says they were delicious fried up at home.
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As for Reese, he says spring break is getting in the way of his bragging opportunities.
“But I’ll be telling [everyone] soon, and showing them pictures and videos,” he says cheerfully. “My catfish is bigger than anything my mom or dad has ever caught.”
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