Advice For Catching A Flathead Catfish

Original post made by Justin W. Cantrell(Justin) on April 3, 2003

Advice For Catching A Flathead Catfish

For rigging, I would recommend a slip-rig with a 2 oz weight on it. Use a 5/0-8/0 hook, whatever style you're most comfortable with. This rig is very versatile in areas without a lot of current, like rivers.

Bait would be either Gizzard Shad, skipjack, or cut-sucker. I prefer the Gizzard Shad heads hooked through the eyes. Don't be afraid to use large pieces of bait. If you don't already have a cast net you may want to get one first, it will bring in alot of bait and takes only about an hour to learn how to use. You can find them at Wal-Mart for under $20.00! Practice in your yard before you go out on the water.

As for location, you'll want to key in on certain high percentage areas to eliminate most of the un-productive water. Three things I like to look for are Humps, Drop-Offs, Trees and river channels. Only stop and fish an area if it has one or more of those four features. The more features in one area, the better. Like if your motoring along the river bed and suddenly see an area of cover right along it with bait-fish near, just gets better and better.

Use two anchors to help keep the boat steady. Throw one off the front, drift back with the wind, when you drift back far enough throw out the back anchor, then pull the front anchor rope until you pull the boat back over the area you want to be, and tighten the back anchor rope. Its important that you anchor and position the boat correctly.

Like when your fishing trees you'll double anchor outside the wind blown trees.
This will allow you to throw 4 or more lines along the edge of the front wind blown trees where the more active fish are.

When you're fishing a hump, ecspecially a hump where you detect bait fish with your sonar, Just lower some lines straight down at different depths.

A drop-off or river bed can be fished pretty much the same way. Anchor off in the shallower water along the river bed or drop-of, and drift back over the river bed "or deeper water" slightly. Then just drop some lines straight down and toss a few out in different depths. Easy as pie.

There are many more techniques you can use for catching bigger cats, but these should help give you a good start. Just remember that if the area you're in doesn't have some of those four features......Move! Don't stay in the same place for more than 40 minutes without a fish, some people stay for shorter or longer, but thats generally my average stay on an unproductive hole.