704 Catches Monster Catfish for Bass Pro Shops

We Did It!

We hooked up with Bass Pro Shops to replace the late Bubba, the infamous Blue Catfish. We were essentially hunting a slot fish. Had to be over 40lbs but not over 50lbs. Anything close to 60lbs would eat the other fish in the Aquarium. The team set out to find him. We fished several nights “Chasing Charlie”. We caught a few 25lb’rs and several 35lb’rs. Evan and Justin even caught a 60lb+ fish one night. We had to find the perfect Catfish for the Aquarium. Tuesday night was the night! Not only did we find one, we found two! So instead of catching one catfish named Charlie in the journey of “Chasing Charlie”, we now have “Chase & Charlie”. One will live out its life as a Rockstar in the Concord, NC location and the other will be relocated to another store in need of a beautiful Blue Catfish. These two Stanly County catfish will bring thousands if smiles from kids and fish lovers everywhere that will visit the Aquariums for years to come. Best part, we got it all on film and will be able to share our adventure with you all on an upcoming episode of the 704 Outdoors TV Show! We’ll make announcements when Chase & Charlie will be released into their Aquariums!

We had a lot of questions on how long have we been “Chasing Charlie”

We originally got the call over the summer but didn’t want to fish during the spawn. We started by filming the introduction at Bass Pro Shops with store management and discussed our plan of securing the replacement catfish for Bubba. We have actually only been actively filming and fishing for only a few weeks once we felt like spawning was over. We mostly hit Tillery and Badin because we really wanted a Stanly County catfish to donate. A night or two we ventured to Tuckertown. We would get together a couple night’s a week and give it a shot. A lot of long nights, a lot of fish put in the boat that didn’t make the cut. The stress started building and we really dug in a couple weeks ago. Here are a few of the fish we landed while filming, a lot under and a few over. Remember we had a specific request for over 40lbs but under 50lbs. Nothing over 60lbs would be accepted. Here’s a peek of a few we reeled in and released before we captured the perfect Blue Catfish for Bass Pro Shops, Chase & Charlie.