I have heard similar complaints about Pole Benders before. Beware of pay lakes around here that charge you a set price to fish, whether you catch anything or not. They don't have as much incentive to stock a bunch of fish - they make more money if they spend just enough on fish to keep everybody catching a few and coming back to spend more money. Many years ago I had similar results at Brown's Pay Lake near here - maybe it's changed now, but I fished it three separate times and saw lots of people pay their money to fish, but only one or two folks caught any catfish at all. Ten bucks is a lot to spend for a few hours' fishing and no fish caught.
Obviously, if you fish the lakes where it doesn't cost much to fish, but they charge by the pound for the fish you catch, then they have an incentive to make sure you catch as many fish as you want to take home to eat. You will probably wind up paying more overall, but I'd rather pay a little more for several pounds of fish than pay ten bucks to get skunked or catch one small fish that's not enough for a meal.
As far as better pay lakes around here for catfish, there was one up toward Graball called Twin Lakes that was really good. The owner had some health problems and it closed for a while - I'm not sure if it's back open now. But if it is, it's a good lake. The Gallatin Pay Lake on North Water Ave. is usually pretty good too.
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