Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Need Advice from Experienced Cat Fishermen

Thanks for all your replies. Now that the ice is melting, I'm going to try some bank fishing. These lakes have cat...but they're small lakes (man made) so a good cast can get you to the deepest water they have.

Best to y'all.

Lotsa luck, big cats can be fun. So can regular sized ones on lighter gear, so hope you do good.

IF you want to take a BIG Flathead, you need a bucket full of live Sunfish or BIG Goldfish (where goldfish are legal) , as "PAPA" doesn't often take cut bait.

Fish the live bait about 6" off the bottom. - After dark is BEST.
(Our largest flattie so far was 68# and pulled like being hooked to a Jeep.)

yours, tex

Dan...a little more grist for your mill..I found for channel cats the best bait I ever used was LIVE minnows, as they are a bit more predacious than some species. Fish them on the bottom. Second best bait, for reasons known only to the catfish, was shrimp....raw.

ingwe,

Oddly enough, the channel cats will frequently hit an artificial bait. = My biggest channel to date hit a Rapala.

yours, tex

Yep! Caught them on plugs AND plastic worms fished for bass!

ingwe,

A K-12 buddy of mine was in a BASS tournament & caught a channel cat on a plug. - He was disgusted with having wasted time reeling-in a lowly catfish & tossed it back. - Later he discovered that he had likely released a NEW STATE CHANNEL CAT RECORD.
(His partner said that what Tommy said then is truly "unprintable".)

yours, tex

I've had good luck on Frogs, live shad or shiners (seined) the same freshly dead (less than 12 hours) and crawlers. with crawlers you often catch a variety of fish, especially carp where I am. I never had much luck with gizzards or livers but only tried them a handfull of times. I've always wanted to try shrimp and might do that this spring. I preferred circle hooks and egg or flat sinkers. never used floats to keep them off the bottom and didn't need to in my experience. all mine have been caught in rivers or reservoirs. biggest channel cat was 30.2 lbs biggest flathead was 28 lbs even.

That’s a monstrous channel cat!

We haven’t been doing much good around here lately, it’s been so damn cold that our water temperature has dropped making bait tough to catch and the cat bite slow slow. Spring is right around the corner and as soon as it warms up for a week or two they’ll pick back up again.

I missed the state record by 2 lbs I haven't caught one even close to that before or since. it was spring 1998 and I caught it on an ultralight rod, 8 lb test using a plain hook and 3/8 egg sinker and 3 dead fathead minnows. biggest not including that one were about 18-20 lbs and a lot in the 6-12lb range. good eaters.
I miss walking out the backdoor a few hundred yards and catching catfish all night along the river.

Some very good info on this thread. I would add one of my favorite ways is to drift in a slow river with no weight, or will add just enough weight to bounce on the bottom. Then I use the trolling motor to keep the boat in the right position. Once we find fish we will redrift the same area. Very productive.