Guide Spotlight: Todd Longley of City Cats
Tony Capecchi 09.22.17
Forget what you know about fishing and fishing guides. A catfishing adventure on Manitoba’s famed Red River with Todd Longley will change your perceptions on both accounts.
Conventional wisdom says that catching big fish requires patience. You’ve got to put your time in if you want to target trophies, right? Wrong. Manitoba is the channel catfish capital of the world for good reason, as I discovered earlier this summer during an epic outing just 30 minutes from downtown Winnipeg.
The action for big channel cats was so fast and furious that Longley, my dad and I rarely had time to set up and cast our third rod before one of our first two lines was taken by a 15-plus pound cat. When we did finally get a chance to set out all three lines, the following chaos ensued:
As for Longley himself, the “Rock ‘n Roll fisherman” is a tattoo-covered, long-haired, life-of-the-party type of guy who loves music, fun times, Monster Energy drinks and teaching kids to fish, in no particular order. Spending 130 days a year on the water, he’s also insanely dialed in to giant catfish.
“I’ve been guiding since ’99,” said Longley, who runs a 20.5-foot Alumacraft with a 250-horse Verado Mercury outboard. “At first, I really didn’t know what I was doing. Getting to this point has been an evolution.”
Today, he’s broadly recognized as one of the top catfish guides in Manitoba, which is generally regarded as one of the top channel catfish destinations in the world.
“The Red River is home to the biggest channel cats in North America,” Longley said as my dad began battling our first cat a mere 4 minutes into fishing. “Be ready for a long fight, and enjoy it.”
After a lengthy struggle, Dad eventually caught what was at that time the biggest catfish of his life (31 inches), but what turned out to be one of our smallest fish of the day.
Even though we were fishing from only 10:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., I was hoping we’d have the opportunity to tangle with a Manitoba Master Angler channel catfish (34 inches). What I wasn’t anticipating was that literally every single fish would be big. Or, that we’d catch a dozen cats during our half-day of guided fishing, especially considering we started after the primetime morning bite, and we devoted quite a bit of time shooting several videos and touring the Red.
It was fascinating to learn about the famous Red River. Longley, who had volunteered the day before to take kids outs fishing to introduce them to the sport, is an excellent teacher. You know the saying about trying to make learning fun? Well, Longley has such a contagious zest for life that he makes everything in his boat entertaining and interesting.
“In early April, they [channel catfish] start moving up the river, up to the locks,” Longley explained. “The season really starts in mid-May and ends in October. Closer to mid-June, they go to holes and rocky areas. Post-spawn, August cats are unbelievable.”
We fished late July on an 85-degree day in Selkirk, which has one of the nicest public accesses I’ve seen. It’s surrounded by an equestrian area and vast campground my dad and I made mental note of for potential return trips.
Longley uses 9- to 10-foot Shimano Talora rods, equipped with 301E Curado reels, 25-pound braided line and a 7/0 Gamakatsu Octopus hook he helped design and launched at Cabela’s 2 years ago. A 3-ounce egg sinker anchors the bait-of-choice, in this case Thai Gold frozen shrimp.
Here’s a video we shot of Longley showing exactly how to bait your hook to optimize your presentation.
Do this right, and hopefully you’ll have to worry about setting the hook. A common mistake, Longley said, is to set the hook too soon. To help demonstrate, we filmed an example hookset that happened to result in Longley catching a tagged channel cat he’s actually caught before. He recognized it not only by the tag, but by the unique egg-size circle on its head.
Here’s the hookset video:
Our entire outing with Longley was fantastic, and the experience was about much more than just catching fish. But, let’s face it, it is a fishing trip, so the action matters. As far as sheer results go, I’m supremely confident in saying an outing with Longley on the famous Red River will produce a good bang for your buck.
Dad and I caught four Manitoba Master Angler channel catfish, two for each of us. The biggest was 39 inches, and on several occasions, we each caught monsters at the exact same time. We started off joking about how tired our arms were, but by the end of the afternoon we were serious. It’s a great workout — and an even better memory.
When we got in the car after fishing to drive back to our Winnipeg hotel, my soft-spoken father made a comment that summed up our one-of-a-kind-outing quite well.
“Wow,” he said with a grin on his face. “That was something.”
The website for Todd Longley is CityCats.ca. To contact Todd, call 204.955.2744 or email manitobachannelcats@gmail.com.
Manitoba is home to a wide variety of phenomenal fishing. For more information on other Manitoba fishing adventures, visit HuntFishManitoba.ca.
Editor’s note: Since age 18, Tony Capecchi has produced media for national television, magazine and radio outlets such as NBC, CBS, ESPN2 and The History Channel. OutdoorHub is proud to have Capecchi writing a Guide Spotlight series throughout 2017, showcasing the best guides he’s encountered in his world travels.
