Day Time Flathead Catfish

I usually use 2" to 4" punkinseeds as my choice bait, I rig up useing a three way swivel with 4 pound test hooked to a 3 ounce sinker and only about 4" leader to the hook.l so if i snag up i can just break off the sinker, this is important because i fish a medium sized river almost weekly for flats in the middle of the day and the trick is to find the deepest darkest cover and drop your bait right in the middle of it. Your going to go thru a ton of sinkers and quite a few hooks :cursing: , but its worth it. Make sure your using stout gear when fishing this way i use a 8' heavy action rod and at least 40 pound line, i prefer spiderwire, last is the hook i'm a firm believer in circle hooks but this type of fishing in my opinion requires a good old heavy guage J hook, believe me you won't have time to let a big flat load the rod for circle hooks without him snaggin up in the cover.

Lastly the most important thing when fishing this style is to fish fast don't spend a lot of time at each spot, those cats will be lazy hiding under cover to get away from the daylight...kinda like me during a colts game i'm not about to go chase something to eat but say a couple dozen hot wings show up right in front of me i'm certainly goin to chow down , and thats the trick you have to get the food right in FRONT OF THE FISH!!

Good Luck, and Good Fishing!

I like those punkinseeds for bait too. Theres just certain kinds of perch and sunfish that are more hardy than others. A punkinseed or a black perch will outlast a bluegill everytime. If my baitwell is full of either of those two, it's not the baits fault if we dont catch fish. I've had black perch and punkinseed both that stayed on the hook over 3 hours...and when I put on a fresh bait...the one I took off swam away. I primarily fish for my flathead and my bluecat during the daylight hours since I work the 3 rd shift. The Neosho river...which is for the most part a shallow river...at least our section of it is. Ten or twelve feet is considered the deepest of the deep holes here. There is a low water dam here that blocks the progress of any migrating fish that is moving upstream from a large reservoir down south 40 or so miles away. We'll start sometimes at daylight wading the riffles below the dam fishing for blue cats and channel left over from the previous night that are still lingering around in the shallow water. For them most any bait will work...liver, beef melt, shad, perch, shiners, crawfish, hellgramites, nightcrawlers...these fish are still hungry and will grab any quick meal that they can because they are fixing to head back to hold in deeper water for the rest of the day and they know it. We'll drift our presentation weightless if necessary in order to allow the bait to travel with the current bouncing along on the bottom. Typically, the wade fishing action cuts off around 10 or 11 am. After that we crawl out of the river...clean our fish...eat a quick snack...and then launch the boat there at the dam first. We'll anchor directly below the dam in front of one the of dozens of rockpiles and holes or in the main channel. The honey hole there is a huge rock pile in the deepest of the water there below the dam....9'. It always holds some yellers. I've seen some mighty nice flats come out of that hole...some of them have been mine. We'll toss a 2 or 3 oz pyramid or flat no roll sinker and a 7/0 or 8/0 Gamakatsu octopus circle hook rigged carolina style with a 3 - 5" punkinseed or black perch impaled on it. Sometimes the wait is a long one. We'll sometimes stay put there for 5 hours without a bite because we have confidence in that spot. More times than not the wait is made worth it in the end in that particular place. If we get ancy and decide to go somewhere else...we'll pull anchor....jet downstream...and set up shop somewheres else. We'll concentrate mainly on holes that also happen to have brush, logs, or rocks in them. Creek and tributary inlets and runoffs also produce...especially if they have cover located within them. We dont spend nearly as much time on this isolated cover as we do at the dam where the migrating fish arent able to pass over the dam and as a result are more concentrated than the spread out "resident" flatheads are. These isolated pockets of cover do pay off however. But in order to cash in on these payoffs you have to be willing to be mobile and you need to be able to assess correctly how long you should spend in these spots without getting a bite before you decide to move on to the next one. Sometimes it's a waiting game you can win...more often you lose. The truest testament I have ever heard on that subject came in the form of my grandpas words to me when I was a young boy and he'd take me out catfishing on the same waters that I fish with my kids now...We'd be sitting in the same spot for an imagined eternity with no action and I'd be squirming around...whining that I was bored and asking why cant we move...He'd hiss...."Thats why they call it fishing and not catching. Now shut up boy....you're scaring the fish." That image is burned into my brain....and everytime I go to pull up anchor I remember it and ask myself if I gave the spot I'm preparing to leave a fair enough shake. I can almost feel his glare shooting down at me over his nose with his head tilted back at those times.

I am not sure if this is the right place for this, but I think it will get you the picture. I have a bait tank. It is an old claw foot tub and I have one of those long (approx 12" aerator stones) and it is next to the drain. I didn't have a drain plug but I had a section of wet dry vac handle, you know the tube thingy? I stuck that down in the hole and presto! Anyhow, a few weeks back Netman gave me some bullheads after we were done fishin. My daughter won't let me use him because he now belongs to her . Last week I also added some bluegill. Upshot of it is, is that this is like a small lake and the only structure is the aerator and the tube (kinda like a tree and a downed log). I have NEVER seen that catfish, or the bluegill (the wild fish) anywhere but snug against the structure. The goldfish are all over. Course I am looking at them only in daylight (I have them at work). I have thought that I fish structure, but after observing these fish I would say that you need to be very presise in your presentation. When I drop a worm in there it has to be within 2-3 inches of the structure for the bullhead to grab it. Bass fisherman do it all the time when they are flipping.In other words, just like when bait fishing for gills, by observation only, I would suggest knowing exactly where that log starts and ends and actually tuck that bait in. I haven't been able to prove it on the river, but I have to believe that baitfish act similarly to their bigger cousins.