Flatheads or shovelhead nest in holes in the river. This can be under logs in holes in rock, concrete rubble, old pipe on the riverbottom, beaver dens, literally anything the fish can get back into and protect the eggs from predation. If nothing suitable is available both the male and the female will work together to create a hole in the riverbank. Dense brush that makes it hard for other fish to get to the eggs is sometimes also used.
Once spawning has occurred the male will chase off the female and guard the eggs. The ferocity with which he does this this is one reason it is extremely hard to raise shovelheads in captivity. The male will kill the female if she is not removed from the nest site as soon as the eggs are laid.
Young of the year flatties live in riffle areas with cobble or rubble covered bottoms until they are between 2 and 4 inches long. Once they reach that length they begin to disperse all thru the river in a wide variety of habitats, pools,riffles, etc. without any preference I could find for any particular one. Once they get about a foot long to about 16 inches in length they locate in and around cover in intermediate depths in the stream. Fish bigger than that (the ones we as fishermen want) then become very specific about where their location, which we will deal with in just a bit.
Baby flatheads start out eating microcrustaceans and insect larvae and as they grow eat larger and larger prey. They begin to eat crayfish and small fish and steadily take larger and larger prey until as large adults take things like suckers, carp, smallmouth bass and even scuba divers below dams. Okay I may have made up the scuba diver part but most avid river anglers have caught smallmouth bass with scaled looking rings around their bodies where they have narrowly escaped being dinner for a big shovel. I've seen them on bass as large as 12 or 14 inches long. I'd love to tangle with the cats that created those wounds. Unlike other catfish species, shovelheads have a distinct preference for live bait over any other kind. They are top predators and do very little scavenging.
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 on your street 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)
What happens is the water coming around the outside of a bend is traveling faster than the water on the inside of the bend. Just like inside of a wheel is traveling slower than the rim of the wheel. The water piles up against the outside of the bend as it is pushed by the water behind. A little known fact is that the rivers surface is not level it is tilted slightly with the surface being a bit higher on the outside of the bends. This piled up water then turns down under and curves back under itself as is goes around the bend. This is always in a helical spiral with the water on the rivers bottom traveling towards the inside of the bend. This helical current combined with the lower velocity of the slower water on the inside of the bend builds up a bar on the inside of the bend and digs out a hole on the outside of the bend. In sharper bends the bank on the outside of the bend will be cut into and undermined and the river bank will become a vertical cliff. This is called a helicoidal flow if you wish to google it though I'll probably make a post about it in the future. Throw in a bit of cover and or a hole cut into the bank and you have the most preferred spot in rivers without dams like the LMR. (or in really long sections of rivers that have few dams like the WWR)
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.
In a Mississippi River study, all but one tagged flathead were found less than a mile from their capture site. In the Apalachicola River, 96 percent of recaptured flatheads were found in the same river stretch where they were originally tagged. And a tracking study in Mississippi found that flathead home ranges averaged less than half a river mile.
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 you know what your doing just a little. The sensible way is with 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. 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. They were presenting baits shallow at night to ctive feeding cats.
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.
As the rivers cool in the fall flatheads begin to move to deeper holes in each river section where they will spend the winter. In rivers down south where water temperatures remain above 50˚F throughout winter, flatheads may remain in the same areas they occupied during summer. As long as these holes are filled in by changes in the river flatheads often return to same spots yer after year.
Studies on the Minnesota River conducted by biologists with the Department of Natural Resources found that channel cats and flatheads favor different wintering holes, though some overlap will occur. While channel cats tend to congregate in the deepest available water, flatheads favor holes with heavy wood cover or rock structure that blocks current, usually in water 12 to 18 feet deep. Channels and shovelheads will winter in the same area if the deepest holes the channels like have the cover the shovels prefer.
Although shovelheads will occasionally feed in winter if food happens to present itself for the most part thy are very inactive.
A study in Minnesota found that flatties captured in winter had mud on their upper sides. In another radio tracking transmitter signals were weaker than usual for fish that settled to silted bottom zones in winter. The scientists thought that maybe that some flatheads might be burrowing or kind of settling and working themselves into the bottom mud in winter. In some cases the sediment can be five degrees or more warmer than the water above.
Young of the year flatties live in riffle areas with cobble or rubble covered bottoms until they are between 2 and 4 inches long. Once they reach that length they begin to disperse all thru the river in a wide variety of habitats, pools,riffles, etc. without any preference I could find for any particular one. Once they get about a foot long to about 16 inches in length they locate in and around cover in intermediate depths in the stream. Fish bigger than that (the ones we as fishermen want) then become very specific about where their location, which we will deal with in just a bit.
Baby flatheads start out eating microcrustaceans and insect larvae and as they grow eat larger and larger prey. They begin to eat crayfish and small fish and steadily take larger and larger prey until as large adults take things like suckers, carp, smallmouth bass and even scuba divers below dams. Okay I may have made up the scuba diver part but most avid river anglers have caught smallmouth bass with scaled looking rings around their bodies where they have narrowly escaped being dinner for a big shovel. I've seen them on bass as large as 12 or 14 inches long. I'd love to tangle with the cats that created those wounds. Unlike other catfish species, shovelheads have a distinct preference for live bait over any other kind. They are top predators and do very little scavenging.
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 on your street 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)
What happens is the water coming around the outside of a bend is traveling faster than the water on the inside of the bend. Just like inside of a wheel is traveling slower than the rim of the wheel. The water piles up against the outside of the bend as it is pushed by the water behind. A little known fact is that the rivers surface is not level it is tilted slightly with the surface being a bit higher on the outside of the bends. This piled up water then turns down under and curves back under itself as is goes around the bend. This is always in a helical spiral with the water on the rivers bottom traveling towards the inside of the bend. This helical current combined with the lower velocity of the slower water on the inside of the bend builds up a bar on the inside of the bend and digs out a hole on the outside of the bend. In sharper bends the bank on the outside of the bend will be cut into and undermined and the river bank will become a vertical cliff. This is called a helicoidal flow if you wish to google it though I'll probably make a post about it in the future. Throw in a bit of cover and or a hole cut into the bank and you have the most preferred spot in rivers without dams like the LMR. (or in really long sections of rivers that have few dams like the WWR)
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.
In a Mississippi River study, all but one tagged flathead were found less than a mile from their capture site. In the Apalachicola River, 96 percent of recaptured flatheads were found in the same river stretch where they were originally tagged. And a tracking study in Mississippi found that flathead home ranges averaged less than half a river mile.
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 you know what your doing just a little. The sensible way is with 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. 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. They were presenting baits shallow at night to ctive feeding cats.
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.
As the rivers cool in the fall flatheads begin to move to deeper holes in each river section where they will spend the winter. In rivers down south where water temperatures remain above 50˚F throughout winter, flatheads may remain in the same areas they occupied during summer. As long as these holes are filled in by changes in the river flatheads often return to same spots yer after year.
Studies on the Minnesota River conducted by biologists with the Department of Natural Resources found that channel cats and flatheads favor different wintering holes, though some overlap will occur. While channel cats tend to congregate in the deepest available water, flatheads favor holes with heavy wood cover or rock structure that blocks current, usually in water 12 to 18 feet deep. Channels and shovelheads will winter in the same area if the deepest holes the channels like have the cover the shovels prefer.
Although shovelheads will occasionally feed in winter if food happens to present itself for the most part thy are very inactive.
A study in Minnesota found that flatties captured in winter had mud on their upper sides. In another radio tracking transmitter signals were weaker than usual for fish that settled to silted bottom zones in winter. The scientists thought that maybe that some flatheads might be burrowing or kind of settling and working themselves into the bottom mud in winter. In some cases the sediment can be five degrees or more warmer than the water above.
Which brings me to a little known feeding strategy that flatties employ that I have twice witnessed myself though I didn't recognise it the time. In a couple studies flatheads were observed lying motionless with their mouth open creating an inviting hole for an unsuspecting little fish to swim into. I imagine that is how most feeding behavior occurs in winter. The times I've seen this have been in the heat of summer though and were right below a lowhead dam. In both cases a big shovel was lying in very shallow water right where a chute of water came off the dam and over shallow water. In one case the cat was lying with almost its back sticking out of the water just lying motionless with it's mouth open. As I crept around trying to present a bait to them both fish spied me and raised holey h### getting out of there and back to the safety of deeper water.
In early and late spring, anglers will find flatheads in a state of transition. Not every flathead emerges from the wintering holes on the same day or even the same week. Likewise, not every shovel will swim to a nesting hole for spawning at the same time. In these transitory weeks, portions of the population will still be in one mode, while others are moving towards something new new. But during prespawn, feeding and fattening up after the winter and before the rigours of the spawn is the primary motive so it is prime shovelhead time even during midday.
Another fantastic post, Steve. My son's goal this year is to CPR a flathead and we'll be using your knowledge above to make it happen. Thanks so much for sharing. Will let you know when he finds his first, can't wait to see the look on his face.
ReplyDeleteThis is really good info. Apparently, we need to get out earlier!
ReplyDelete