RECORD-SETTER: Grubbs goes after giant catfish

Several weeks ago, Robert Grubbs caught the biggest largemouth bass that Salem Lake has produced this year, a 7½-pounder.

"Aw, I catch one or two big ‘trash fish' every year," he joked.

Not that largemouth bass are trash. They're just not what Grubbs, a 47-year-old Winston-Salem native, wants to catch when he slides his boat into the lake several times a week. The fish he treasures are longer and wider and have whiskers.

"I used to bass-fish a lot, and I enjoyed it, but I just like catching big fish, and my best opportunity for that is to fish for catfish," he said.

So far, he's making the most of his opportunity. Grubbs, who works in a machine shop, has become Salem Lake's catfish expert. Father's Day marks the seventh anniversary of the fish that made him "famous" -- a 55½-pound flathead catfish that is the lake record.

He caught that fish on a live crappie, boating it after a 30-minute struggle that started, he admitted, when he thought he had "hooked a stump."

Then, the stump started to swim off.

Grubbs has had that feeling several times since that June evening in 2003. For six years in a row, he has been Salem Lake's top catfish angler, according to lake supervisor Brian Hutchins. Of the nine biggest catfish caught in the lake, four wound up in Grubbs' net. Last year was his best ever, when he caught five fish that weighed more than 37 pounds, including a 46-pounder and 40½-pounder -- Nos. 4 and 9 all-time -- that he hooked on different rods at the same time.

This year, he was the first fisherman to put a big catfish on Salem Lake's "bragging board," and he has put up more catfish and the biggest catfish to date, a 21-pounder. He has caught most of his big flathead catfish between Memorial Day and mid-July, so he figures this is prime time.

"I've been fishing for catfish since I was a teenager; I mainly fished Tuckertown Lake when I started, back when it was in its prime," Grubbs said. "I started fishing Salem Lake because it's closer to home, and it's a smaller body of water; I think you can learn smaller lakes better. It's a good lake. There's no point in going to Tuckertown when you've got a lake with 55-pound fish in it right at your doorstep."

Grubbs figures he has had on at least one fish bigger than his lake record. He hooked a brute that dragged his boat around for 20 minutes before swimming up into the canary reed grass that lines much of the shoreline and broke his line.

He also figures that Salem Lake is a nearly perfect setting for catching big catfish. It's full of things that big catfish eat -- bream, crappie and shad -- and the habitat is nearly perfect for flatheads, which were introduced, almost accidentally, by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission in the early 1980s. The explanation was that a Commission hatchery truck visited Salem Lake to stock channel catfish after stocking flatheads at W. Kerr Scott Reservoir in Wilkes County and that nine fingerling flatheads were found when it came time to wash down the tanks. The nine little catfish, it was said, were tossed into the lake. The rest is history.

Grubbs does most of his damage late in the evenings, typically just before the lake closes. He usually puts his boat in about 5 p.m. and fishes for bream to use as bait for to two hours or so, then heads to a chosen spot to fish for catfish.

"The majority of my big fish have been caught between 8:30 and 9:30 (p.m.)," Grubbs said. "That's when they move up shallow. I like to get in deep water and throw up on a shallow flat.

"The second most-important rod in my boat is my bream rod. I like to start out with about 10 or 15 good-sized bream. I think they're the best bait for big flatheads."

Grubbs has released alive every big flathead he has caught from Salem Lake, except the lake record, which he had mounted. A replica of the fish hangs on the wall in the Salem Lake fishing station, and it typically draws oohs and aahs from visitors who come to fish or just to grab a bottle of water after a walk or bike ride around the trail.

"That fish didn't come from here, did it?" is the typical question.

"Yes, ma'am," is the standard reply from Hutchins. "And the man that caught it is out there fishing for another one right now."

Dan Kibler is the managing editor of North Carolina Sportsman magazine