Differences in techniques for different species

[Ketch]

First, I would like to say this sure looks like an interesting group of people with quite a wealth of catfishing knowledge especially in regards to flatheads.

I on the other hand, don't know nearly enough about flathead fishing it appears. I have been catfishing for around 20 years now, but due to my locations and hectic work schedules haven't had the opportunity to fish many of the better flathead waters in our state until recently. I also had the luck to live in some of the best catfishing waters in the country (Santee-Cooper Resevoir area, Red River of the North (near Fargo), and SE Kansas on the Neosho River), but was unfortunately not old enough to benefit much from proximity to these fisheries. I did do some catfishing in Kansas, with a few successes, but that was 20 plus years ago and I didn't do much to glean knowledge from the guys there who really knew what they were doing.

Now, I am back in Minnesota, near the Le Sueur area and find myself fishing an apparently good river, but am still using river-lake channel cat methods with limited success for flatheads.

Here's my question(s).

What is your preferred rigging for each species.

What primary differences do you so in how you target each species



Any info you can give would be great.

Now to answer my question
For channel cats I tend to use a 3 way swivel with a 9" drop leader (usually 20 lb) for weights and a 12" 30 lb leader for the hook (usually 2/0 or bigger depending on what sizes I am targeting)

[rushing]

Welcome to the board Chad! The rig that just about everyone uses is a slip sinker rig with about 3-5oz of weight. This rig is used for both channels and flatheads, The only difference is hook size. I use 8/0 circle hooks for my flathead fishing and 6/0 for channels. Live bullheads, suckers or creek chubs are the preferred baits for flatheads and cut sucker or creek chubs for channels.

Click on the attachment below and you can see what a basic slip sinker rig looks like.

Good luck and welcome to the BOC!

[Goldenshinner]

welcome aboard. this is an adicting website. you can easily learn more surfing this board than a lifetime of fishing. take and give what y can. and yes your in good waters for both species. Rushing said it well and that is a good place to start. most of the river nuts are using roughly similar gearing with minor personal preferences. I for example will often use slightly smaller hooks as i feel they are faster and more easier to set, but i prefer wider(higher aught) sized gap hookss. i use slightly heavier weights(when i can afford them), and my line class is often in the 80- 100lb test as i have had problems occasionaly with break offs(but last weeks big fish came on like 8lb test line, and that was a riot, a good 20min chase spanning roughly a mile under flood stage river, a very memorable night). many of these questions have very complex dynamic answers that depend where when what and how. enjoy

[whiskers77]

Welcome to the BOC Chad! I have to agree with Rob on my preffered setup, I use the Carolina rig as well.

[Ketch]

Hey guys, thanks for the warm welcome. It does seem like there is a wealth of info available on this site. The last few days I have read an incredible amount of info on what others are doing. I really just wanted to see what the local "spin" was on what everyone is doing. It seems everywhere you go someone has a little something different they do so a "standard" rig. It will be interesting for me to move away from the channel cat methods I have always used into something different. Not used to fishing live bait much.

Do any of you guys fish the Sauk River chain between Sauk Center and St. Cloud at all? If you are targeting channel cats at all, it is a really interesting fishery for them, especially in the stretch between Richmond and Cold Spring. Several 15-20 lbs channels taken every year. Unfortunately, the cats seem to be the scourge of the chain as they have about taken over the fishery much to the walleye fisherman's dislike. Personally, I loved it. Problem is, when you tried to target other species on the 17 lake chain, you still caught mostly cats. Trolling it was particularly evident and I even took a few cats when topwater fishing for bass.

Maybe I'll try a slip rig this weekend when I head out. Again, thanks for the help.

[Goldenshinner]

ahh, i wouldnt say the cats overtaken the eyes, there are some good walleye spots. a pal of mine lives out there and during spring and fall has some very good walleye spots. I never realy thought the channels to be that excessively large in that streach. Decient but not big.but ive only put in a few years experimenting on that river.

[Ketch]

I don't think they've taken it over either, that's just the response you hear from a lot of the locals. I think you just have to pick your locations a little better. I have had fair success on the 'eyes and decent success with pike there. It doesn't appear as though the stocking of catfish has done what they hoped, since the panfish still run pretty small overall.

I lived in that area for about 10 years with the same hectic schedule I have now, so the Sauk Chain is all I fished for some time.