Adam Wolf, owner of Tombstone Tackle in Columbia, makes a habit of taking giant blue catfish from the Missouri River at night. This 70-pounder is a good example of what he's catching. Photo courtesy of Adam Wolf.

On the Missouri River, Heart-pounding things really do go bump in the night, and that's never more likely to happen than during the month of August.

One minute, the barely audible thrum of the anchor rope, straining to hold the boat bow-on into the current and the even-more-subtle hiss of swift water passing under the hull are the only sounds you can hear. Then, with no warning whatsoever, the clicker on one of the reels at the stern of the boat starts to scream.

You and your partner reach the bucking rod at the same time, and it takes both of you to pry it out of its holder. Somewhere out in the darkness, "something" thrashes on the surface for the briefest of moments before getting serious about ridding itself of whatever has pricked its jaw.

If your knots hold and if you've paid sufficient homage to the Big Muddy's ancient spirits, eventually a blue head and a forked tail, separated by 4 or 5 feet of muscle and bone, will be brought to heel and manhandled into the boat. This is a fish that doesn't suffer from the piscatorial version of "ground shrinkage." It looks big in the water, it looks big on the boat's deck, and it will look big when the scales are applied.

If that sounds like something you'd like to try, the odds are you won't have to drive far to do it. A significant majority of our state's citizens live less than 50 miles from the Missouri River. In fact, it passes through the state's two largest cities.

With that many people so close to that much water -- the Missouri River is, by far, the state's largest body of water -- it might seem logical that bank-fishing opportunities would abound. Unfortunately, that's not the case for anglers targeting double-digit blue cats. While riverside city parks, Missouri Department of Conservation accesses, and federal land purchased after the 1993 flood do provide some walk-in access to the riverbank, a boat remains a virtual necessity.

Even so, operating a fishing boat on this particular river requires an "attitude adjustment" when compared with boating anywhere else in the state. When I was talking to retired MDC employee Craig Gemming recently, I made the potentially embarrassing admission that the Missouri River is the only body of water I've ever been on that scared me.

"That's a good thing," he replied. "I'm afraid of the river, too, and I've been fishing it for many years. In fact, you should tell your readers that, if they ever stop being at least a little bit afraid while they're fishing on the Missouri, they need to get off of the river immediately and stay off of it."