Catching flathead catfish out of her kayak always brings a smile to Mary Kay Myers’ face.
Kayaking for Kansas Cats
By Brent Frazee
Kayak angler Mary Kay Myers borrows a scenario from “Jaws”—”We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
When Mary Kay Myers paddles her kayak down the murky Neosho River in eastern Kansas, she has a good idea what lurks below the surface.
Somewhere down there, there’s a big flathead looking for its next meal. And Myers is determined to serve it to her.
Experience tells Myers that it’s more than just an idle dream. She loves telling fish stories about a September to remember last year.
She caught flatheads weighing 42, 40 and 38 pounds all within a few weeks.
“I caught one every Monday,” said Myers, who lives in Council Grove, Kansas. “I caught the first one on the first Monday of the month, then the other two the next two Mondays.”
Myers caught and released other flatheads in the 15- to 20-pound range during that stretch.
She guesses that the big fish were feeding up in advance of winter, and she was fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time.
When she caught the first one, she fought it for perhaps 15 minutes, got it to the boat and experienced one of those, “Now what?” moments.
“I netted the fish but I couldn’t figure out how to get it into the boat,” she said. “Finally, I had to paddle over to shore and call my husband to help me.”
But before she said goodbye to her catch, she practiced ways to slide it into her kayak so she was prepared for the next time. It worked. She was able to pull in the next two flatheads on her own, just another step in the education of a big-cat fisherwoman.
Maybe that’s fitting. Myers is an on-line educator after spending years teaching in the classroom. She works out of her home and keeps regular hours. But she always makes sure there is time for fishing in her schedule, whether it be in the early-morning or late-evening hours.
“I’ve seen a lot of beautiful Kansas sunrises and sunsets,” she said. “I start some mornings before the sun comes up, but I’m off the water by 8 a.m.”
By now, Myers’ routine is predictable. She launches her kayak and heads for deep holes below riffles, usually in the bends of the river. She ties down to a stump or a tree on the bank and casts her lines out. She uses small panfish that she caught the day before as bait and waits.
She uses spinning rods and reels equipped with 15- to 20-pound monofilament line, enough to handle a big fish but still light enough to allow her to enjoy the fight.
The big ones don’t come around every day, but she usually ends up with something to show for her fishing time—either channel cats or flatheads. She releases the big ones, then continues her quest to catch one even bigger.
She has proof for her fish stories. She tapes her daily experiences then posts them on Facebook. Her Reels have attracted quite a following. Some of her videos have gotten 10,000 to 20,000 views.
Part of that is because of Myers’ humble, likeable personality. She doesn’t project herself as an expert. Instead, she comes across as a middle-aged woman who has a passion for catching big catfish.
It’s one of those, “If I can do it, so can you” type of things.
She fishes for other species, especially crappie in the spring, but her main focus is catfish.
“I just love the whole optics of it,” she said. “Here I am, a middle-aged woman, and I’m out there trying to catch huge catfish. I’m just fascinated by the size of catfish that live in this river.”
Myers also fishes Council Grove Reservoir and some of the other creeks and rivers in the area.
“I’m lucky that I live in an area where I have access to lots of good fishing water,” she said. “Getting to the water is just a matter of minutes for me.”
Some might say that her journey to becoming an avid catfish angler was an unlikely one. Her parents didn’t fish, and she was slow to take to the pastime. Her first husband was an avid bass fisherman, and Myers often tagged along when he practiced for tournaments. But when he was killed in a car accident in the spring of 2004, she sold his bass boat and got out of fishing for a while.
When she met her current husband, Chris, their first date was a fishing trip.
“He thought he was really going to impress me, but I caught a 5-pound bass on my second cast,” she said with a laugh.
Myers really developed a passion for kayak fishing during the COVID years.
“When COVID hit, we were all stuck in the house,” she said. “I decided that fishing was something I could do every day without coming into contact with anybody.”
In some of the small spots she fished, catfish were the dominant species, and the more Myers fished, the better she became at catching them.
Last year, she decided to challenge herself. In the spring, she set a goal of catching 200 pounds of fish. She quickly accomplished that goal, then raised to bar to 500 pounds. Later, she again upped her goal to 800 pounds.
Her Facebook followers became involved, cheering her on as she reached each goal. By fall, she had met her goal of 800 pounds, then she stopped counting.
By now, she has become well known in her part of the world for her exploits. One day when she was fishing, a woman approached her and asked, “Aren’t you the one who does all those Facebook videos?”
But Myers remains humble about her mission. She isn’t doing it for fame or fortune. She is following her passion.
“I don’t look at myself as an expert or anything,” she said. “I don’t even have a trolling motor or a depthfinder on my kayak.
“But after you’ve been on the water as much as I have, you get a sense of where the fish are going to be.”
(Brent Frazee was the outdoors editor for The Kansas City Star for 36 years before retiring in 2016. He continues to freelance for magazines, websites and tourism agencies. He lives on a lake in a suburb of Kansas City with his wife Jana and his two Labrador retrievers, Millie and Maggie.)
