Shane Hill is no one-trick pony. Although he hasn’t been able to beat his largest catch from 2007, he still manages to hook and haul in monster catfish from the depths of Tennessee’s rivers and lakes, such as this 80-pounder he caught on Chickamauga Lake.About Hill
Shane Hill, who turned 40 on Feb. 9, has been an avid fisherman his whole life. He’s fished with Erich Weber since they were 15. A native of Maryville, Tennessee, Hill says some of his preferred spots are around Chattanooga and Chickamauga, though his favorite is Caney Creek in Kingston, Tennessee, where he says he’s had his best luck.
“We must have sat there the whole entire day, I’m talking at least six hours, without getting even a single bite,” says Shane Hill.
He had been out on Watts Bar Lake on July 4, 2007 with his fishing partner Erich Weber. Hill had been fishing with Weber for over seven years, but this was shaping up to be one of their worst outings yet.
“We were definitely discouraged. I mean, we’d been out on many a trip, and you always at least get a bite or something,” Hill says.
The sun was drifting lazily through the sky above them when they decided to call it quits. The day certainly wasn’t over; they had a family cookout complete with fireworks to go home to. Just as the pair began to gather up the rods they had been trolling the waters with, one of Weber’s lines took off. “At that point we were just happy to have gotten a single bite,” Hill says, laughing.
Hill watched as Weber began to wrestle with the fish. At that moment, one of his rods began to jerk. Hill rushed over to the rod and attempted to set the hook, but something was off. His line felt completely dead, and his hook didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. He sighed to himself; he’d hooked a log, one of the banes of any fisherman. Over his shoulder Weber was hauling in what ended up being a 23-pound catfish. Hill smiled despite himself. At least the trip hadn’t been completely bite-free.
As Weber scanned over his catch, he asked Hill what was on his line.
“Well, I told him that I just hooked a log was all, so he went back to packing everything up,” Hill says. “I grabbed the spool and started to pull up, and I’ll tell you, I’d never hooked anything that felt like this before.”
Had Hill hooked the bottom of the lake? He didn’t think so: usually, all it took to free your hook from that was a bit of jostling on the line.
“Well, it was about when I was trying to pull it back up to the boat that it decided it wanted to fight back,” says Hill. “I had no idea I’d hooked a fish. Neither of us had ever hooked a fish that just stopped dead like that.”
Suddenly, Hill had a battle on his hands, and one he was more than willing to oblige. The lake was nearly empty, and the air was still. The only sounds were the tension of the rod as it creaked and bent, the soft jostling of the boat and Hill straining to keep whatever he’d hooked on his line.
“At the time, the biggest fish I’d ever caught was 48 pounds, and this felt a lot bigger than that,” Hill says. “I turned to Erich and said, ‘I might be in the 50-pound club!’ I was really excited that this might be my biggest fish ever.”
A tense battle of nearly 20 minutes ensued. With finesse, aptitude and strength, Hill managed to work the behemoth close to the surface, free from the murky depths. His arms were exhausted, and his legs were shaking from strain and excitement.
“You got to have patience with stuff like that. I think it’s one of my strong points,” says Hill. “I’m not patient when it comes to a lot, but out on the water I definitely am.”
Weber lowered a net into the water to bring in Hill’s catch. He wasn’t prepared for the beast of a fish his partner had caught. Weber almost dropped the net; he couldn’t haul it on the boat on the first try.
It was a mammoth blue catfish whose battle-scarred body and slashed fins were evidence of a long life fending off those that would usurp him as king of the lake. He refused to stop thrashing even as he cleared the surface. “We would have missed it if we didn’t get it in the boat that second time. It took both of us to pull it in, and even then it wasn’t easy,” says Hill. “Erich turned to me and said, ‘Nah, I think you’re in the 90-pound club.'”
Once back on shore, they posed for some photos with the catfish when a local group of motorcyclists who were driving by insisted they take some photos as well.
“I felt like a bit of a celebrity, honestly,” Hill remembers. “He bottomed out our 75-pound scale, so we knew he was bigger than that.”
Hill had to call his friends to bring a deer scale to get the official weight. There was no way he was letting that fish go before getting a real weight. As dusk overtook the sky, Hill weighed his monster cat at a whopping 100.3 pounds. Forget the 50-pound club; Hill had broken into triple digits.
Hill and Weber released the catfish back into the lake three miles upriver from the boat ramp, close to where it had initially been caught. The pair returned home triumphant; six hours out on the water without a bite had been more than worth it.
“The story doesn’t end there, though,” Hill says, smiling.
The competitive fishing series both Weber and Hill compete in, the East-Tennessee Catfish Anglers Tournament Series, was holding a tournament at the very same lake not a week later. After a week of congratulatory claps on the back and praise for being part of the 100 club, Hill hadn’t given much thought about where he had released that blue catfish.
As the day wound to a close and they headed for the ramp to get their haul weighed in, they spotted something on the shore. Another angler was holding up a suspiciously large catfish, complete with scarring on its skin and notches cut in its tail.
“He went and got himself caught again not 50 yards away from where I initially caught it,” Hill says with a guffaw. “This fish was a king fish. He just ate what he wanted. I bet I wasn’t the first time he’d been hauled in, and that tournament won’t be the last.”