Night stalkers

“What hath night to do with sleep?” 
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

With the onslaught of heat it seemed like a better idea to fish in the relative cool of the night. I fished a small river in southwestern Ohio for one of my favorite fish, the shovelhead catfish. In our smaller rivers the shovelhead or flathead sits square atop the food chain. Flatties are killers that come out on warm summer nights and prowl the river looking for a sucker, a big chub minnow or even (gasp) a smallmouth bass. Although all of our rivers hold shovelheads not all of each river does. I look for a few things before I try catching one. A ten foot deep hole in a bend  that contains woodcover and has an adjacent feeding flat 4 or 5 feet deep will usually hold hold flatheads. Add a couple hundred yards of shallow run upstream and downstream of the hole and you have an ideal spot. What happens is that in summer flatties spend like 20+ hours a day holed up under a logjam in that bend. Then after dark out he comes to prowl up and downstream looking for prey. Most catfishermen in rivers at night spend too much time after dark fishing that deep hole when the monster is really out and about.  
A better strategy is to fish a big live bait or a fresh hunk of cut bait on that feeding flat right next to the deep hole. Further away from the hole you still might catch him but what if the fish went upstream when your fishing down or vice versa? And the hundred yards of shallow run is usually almost river wide and the fish have room to spread out while the feeding flat on the inside of the bend across from the hole is narrow. You simply have a better chance of a shovel finding your bait. If your river has lowhead dams, any with a scour hole over six or seven feet deep is probably the best spot to connect with a big flathead. As long as someone hasn't killed it. It takes decades to grow a big flathead making them vulnerable to overfishing. Keep a channel or two for supper but in today's world you should turn a shovelhead loose in my opinion. 
On this night I baited up with some sunfish on 7/0 king kahle hooks, heavy duty swivels and two ounce no roll sinkers. No giants tonight but five decent fish which is pretty fast and furious for shovelhead fishing since these guy are strictly loners.