Cat fishing the Red River

Been talking about running over to the Red River and try some cat fishing. Planning on the Drayton ND area. Don’t know if I’ve ever caught a catfish to be honest but want to give it a try. The wife and I are thinking of dragging the duck boat over there for a day trip. Any suggestions on what is the best time of year to this is?

Thanks, Bill

I don’t think you can go wrong with right now! Water temps are back on the rise, looks like it was about 63 today.

Captain Brad has been catching the heck out of them recently.

I’m headed out to fish the Red River near Fargo/Moorhead in a week, I’m hoping the water temps stay below 70 but they have a string of 80-85 degree days coming so it may warm up pretty quick.

Thanks Ryan. Got a 3 day weekend coming up so maybe one of those days we can make it over.

Drayton is about as good as it can be. Going to be a circus by the sounds of it but there will be fish to be caught. Bring suckers with you or some crawlers and plan to catch goldeyes. There is no place carrying suckers there from what I understand.

Thanks for the info Brad. I apologies for my lack of knowledge but when you say suckers, do you mean the same suckers used for pike fishing? Do you fish them live or a fillet?

Bill Boyd wrote:

Thanks for the info Brad. I apologies for my lack of knowledge but when you say suckers, do you mean the same suckers used for pike fishing? Do you fish them live or a fillet?

Same one’s you pike fish with. The best ones are 8-10″ long and you cut them into steaks that are about 1″ square. I recommend at least a 7/0 hook too

Thanks Brad….Hopefully we can get over there this weekend and try it out.

It depends what you’re fishing for. If you want to catch the largest cats, use whole suckers with the midsections sliced open to release scent. The largest fish want a meal and not a snack. If you want numbers of smaller fish, use smaller chunks of sucker.