...about flathead catfish in rivers like the LMR or GMR. So I cut my hand rather badly at work. Bad enough that I can't go fishing. At least for a few days anyways, plus there's a brace to keep the stitches in place that makes it impossible to cast. So next best thing, lets talk fishing.
The thing I'm asked about the most are catfish, mostly questions about catching shovelheads on lures. Every time I post a thread with a nice one in it I can expect a couple PM's about it. At least four or five times as many as I would about a trip where I'd catch a nice smallmouth. Heck the last trip with the five shovelheads got me more emails than the two 20 inch smallmouth last fall combined! I guess because the way I go about it is just so different. So here's what little I know about flatheads:
In the winter when there's not much fishing to be had my hobby is collecting studies done on smallmouth bass and/or flathead catfish. Especially radio tracking studies, I have a folder in my favorites full of the things. Much of them are gibberish and pseudoscience mumbo jumbo, pages and pages of stuff thrown in to make some graduate student look smarter than he is and earn a degree. But wade thru all this and a clear pattern begins to emerge. Over and over again, in small to midsized rivers all over middle America, shovels use the same types of habitat in each location.
After the spawn flatties settle into two main kinds of places to spend the summer. One, the most obvious one, is in the scour hole below a dam if the river has lowheads. This has everything a big flathead would want. There is deep water, shallow water to hunt in, almost always debris and cover to hole up in, current and lack of current, and lots and lots of littler fish to eat. Everything a big flathead could ever want in one spot. Kind of like having a Cabela's store in your neighborhood if your a fishing nut like me. The other prime spot to find a big flathead, especially in a free flowing stream like the LMR is an inside bend that has a steep eroded clifflike bank. Every one of these holes that has woody debris in it will have a couple resident flatheads. (if they aren't caught out that is)
A day in the life of a flattie in the LMR consists of spending most of it tucked up under logjams in these bend holes. Like up to 20 hours a day some days! But then comes the exciting part. During a precious few hours that big cat will come out and begin to cruise looking for a big sucker, a drum or (gasp) a tasty smallmouth to chow down on. Make no mistake, a shovelhead eats sushi almost exclusively. I know we have all heard the stories about the monster shovel caught on chicken liver, well that's the exception not the rule. Chicken liver is channel cat and hybrid striper bait not shovelhead bait most of the time.
Which brings us to the two ways to go about catching a flattie, the sensible way and the way I go about it. Both work great if ya know what your doing just a little. The sensible way is with stout stout tackle and live bait. You fish deep inside bends with cover and deep in the scour hole during the day. And shallow on the rock bar across from the bend and shallow on the edge of the scour hole at night. Now I'm never going to land a big cat on light tackle and lures fishing that woody debris during the day so I concentrate on two other areas. I fish below a dam in the shallows and on the shallow rock bar across from that deep bend on rivers with no dam. And I fish at low light or at night when that big cat is most likely to be out of cover and hunting. In one study I saw, flatheads were consistently most active right around dawn. All things being equal I try if I can to fish for them from about two hours before dawn to about an hour afterward. That's when I have the most luck. But they can be active at any time during low light.
I think the biggest mistake I see most guys doing is fishing too deep at night. They have that big surf rod that will cast clear across the GMR. So what do they do? They get below the dam out on the platform and throw their bait right out in the middle. Okay that's the best spot during the day but at night they are throwing way past all the fish. All the active ones anyways. Dan the pioneer of my kind of catfishing once remarked that its amazing how those guys up on platform never catch as much with three or four rods thrown out as he does with one. But his one is fishing where the active fish are and theirs simply aren't. That is why those old timers that used to set jingle lines off of overhanging tree branches caught so many big fish at night too.
Most studies show that during the summer shovelheads are pretty much homebodies, they stick to one section of river and have three or four holes they regularly hide out in when not hunting. If they move during mid day it's often in a straight line down the channel to their next hideout. The exception to this is during periods of high water. For flatheads this seems to be their version of spring break or more likely summer vacation. During periods of high water flatheads will come out of their holes and travel upstream. Sometimes a long way, sometimes for miles. Then as the water recedes they will slowly drift back downstream till they end up back in their home range. One of several reasons I guess that fishing is almost always best as water is rising in a river. Also a good reason to hit a lowhead dam right after high water since that lowhead would act as a roadblock to any vacationing flatheads traveling upstream.
Almost every single study had flatheads liking woody debris in a bend hole much better than rock during the summer tho both are sometimes used. When the water starts to cool in the fall that reverses and shovels like rocky debris better during cooler months of the year.
I catch the majority of my catfish on two types of lures. Soft plastics like swimbaits or grubs fished on a jighead and on lipless crankbaits. I catch a few on other types of lures like minnow plugs but those two lure types catch the most for me. But I think the key is where and when rather than what. I do think maybe the most practical setup might be musky tackle and lures but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun. If you fish shallow rock bars at night you have a pretty good chance of landing even a nice sized cat on "bass" tackle. The key is not trying to horse the fish. Treble hooks just don't have the big gap like a big live bait hook does and if you try to horse the fish a big cat will pull off every time.
So that's it in a nutshell. Fish a couple different types of lures in just a couple different types of spots at just a few times of day. It's about the only type of fishing I know that can be really called a system.
Just remember one thing unless your really old like Blake that trophy flathead you catch is probably as old as you. Don't you dare keep it. Smallmouth bass and Shovelheads should never be kept. Keep a couple channel cats or a saugeye to eat. Throw back that big cat or big smallie!
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