catfishing patterns

I have a catting topic for comment. This year I experienced my worst year of catfishing in the last 5. The one thing I changed was using bullheads(6-11 inchers)instead of hand sized bluegills. I still got a few here and there but spent a lot of time not getting bit in spots that have been golden before. I am wondering if anyone else experienced a lean year. I am wondering if I was just unlucky this year or if maybe my bait switch had something to do with it. I know Matt (Flatheadwi) swears by bluegills and that Dirk has no choice but seems to do well with tiny bullheads. The commercial guys also commented that they saw a lot fewer cats this year. I am wondering if maybe the cats didn’t venture as far down stream after they leave the winter holes. It sure seemed like their were less fish on my stretch of the river.

Kevin,

I caught Flatheads this year on bullheads (primarily), blugills, green sunfish, white bass, mooneye, goldfish, and cutbait. So I would have to say that the bait thing was not your limiting factor. I would guess it was just bad luck…some of my best spots do not produce every night, and unless you can fish every night, you may have just missed “it”

Jason.

J

Bad luck. I usually fish the lower end of pool 9 as you know. It does get some pressure from commercial guys running lines. Matt posted some great fish he tagged 30 miles north of my stomping grounds so I know they are there. I usually experience the arrival of flathead cats in Mid May and they are hungry. This year it seemed they never showed up. My milk run is a little un orthodox. Maybe it took them 5 years to figure out where I am on a given Friday or Saturday night.

We SEEMED to notice a preferance for suckers over bullheads. We were using both, but after a number of nights without a click on a bullhead we switched to all suckers…
It was really too short of a time to draw any conclusions…though.

Brian,

I was really trying to get some input from the catfisherman on the site.

In reponse to Wiskerkev’s response to Brian –

I’d guess that your bait wasn’t the problem but who knows. I think bait does make a difference at times but guessing when is tough. Some guys think cut bait is actually very good, especially early season. Bullheads (all I can use) are great late May though July (and most any other time). I have talked to guys, other than Brian, who have been fishing and not getting bit on bullheads..then drop some suckers down and they end up having a good night. I had a night when I couldn’t get bit so I threw out some cut bait in hopes of catching a channel…and ended up with three flatheads including a 40. I guess if your not getting bit you shouldn’t be afraid of switching things up a bit, including finding new water.

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J

Bad luck. I usually fish the lower end of pool 9 as you know. It does get some pressure from commercial guys running lines. Matt posted some great fish he tagged 30 miles north of my stomping grounds so I know they are there. I usually experience the arrival of flathead cats in Mid May and they are hungry. This year it seemed they never showed up. My milk run is a little un orthodox. Maybe it took them 5 years to figure out where I am on a given Friday or Saturday night.

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I had a great year and fished almost exclusively with bluegills. I think it’s coincidence, though. That’s just the bait I always had at least somewhat handy. I’ve fished with bullheads nearly exclusively in other years and had similar luck. The only time I haven’t had luck on bullheads is in the fall, for whatever reason. It may have to do with how the bait behaves in cooler water – don’t know. Part of my great results this last season had to do with fishing all the time. I logged an enormous number of hours on the water. I also fished differently in May and June due to very high water during much of that time. I fished areas I don’t normally fish, and they were hot as long as the water stayed high. I didn’t tag any real monsters during that time, though.

Sounds like you have your favorite milk run, which is always nice, but when conditions change, you may have to look for quite different water. August sucked the worst for me (and for Dirk and Jason when they visited me, lol). Had a hard time finding fish in very low water. Shoulda been easier, but it wasn’t. I did spend many nights on the water with both sunfish and bullheads in my bait tank, and never really documented any preference.

I think the high water messed with your prespawn milk run. I hate saying things like “luck” because I think there’s always a reason to uncover. Of course you’ll never really know for sure what the reason was, but it’s fun to speculate.

Matt

Does anyone have an opinion of lake or pond bullheads versus river bullheads? I used bullheads from a small pond and couldn’t get bit this year. Just wondering what you guys think.

Man,I hate low water like nothing else. Low water/no flow has single handedly kicked my butt soooooo many times I don’t even like to think about it

Pond vs. stream – I couldn’t tell you…as long as they are lively I can’t see it making a difference.

I was using strictly river bullheads. They were lively on all accounts. I think the year before last I happened upon a pattern that did not hold true this year. I think Matt is right and the very high water may have changed a bait fish pattern I was lucky enough to find the year prior. I would bet the Shad got hammered pretty good in the high water and maybe didn’t provide the numbers as in years past. We had a very good walleye bite on the last part of the year. Some old timers were saying it was the best in 30 years. I wonder if the two trends were related.

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Pond vs. stream – I couldn’t tell you…as long as they are lively I can’t see it making a difference.

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i agree with dirk…..but then i start exploring the issue. Dont bullheads (as most catfishj species) have a mucus memberane on top of thier skin? this is one way they communucate between each other isnt it….as in pheremnones? different individiual fish (bullheads) in totally seperate areas may “smell” different…..and that could create a reaction to how flatheads bite.

i dunno…its just something i’ve pondered.

Hi Guys, Its only about 4 months away!I guess any time is a good time to talk Flatheads though! I was also a little disappointed with my overall catch last summer. The Minnesota River can get a little hard to deal with if you prefer a mild flow. I know turbid water won’t keep catfish from biting but I like it when you can actually see a few inches into the water. My best Flatty went 38# and grabbed a sr7 Shad Rap as it bounced off rip rap in 3 feet of water…mucho fun!

I do believe using fresh lively baitfish from the same water shed you fish will help you out. Those bait store suckers will work in a pinch but its like three day old pizza in my opinion.

Fishing with Jim Moyer last Feb…He would not let any cats back into the river until we were gonna leave. He thinks they can alert the other fish in your bait area that “something is up”. Possible? I think so. Maybe I better go down and study some more!

Btw Why isn’t HTML enabled on here?

Hey Dark30,

A couple guys have asked this fairly recently and I’ve not given a complete answer. Usually I just say to use the UBB Code instead and leave the full explaination out. Since it keeps getting asked please allow me to post what may seem like a bit of an over-kill response.

Leaving HTML enabled is risky. Any punk kid could hack our forums or lead you right into a virus through interaction here in our forums. How likely is this to happen here in a fishing forum? I don’t know. Maybe not terribly likely. But internet security is really all about risk management. Since there is a risk, and a safe alternative, why chance it? What could be accomplished or how bad could it be? Right off the top of my head I can think of a way to use a a particular HTML tag that would redirect the main index page of this forum to any other site I would like. Like a competing site, a porn site… or to some advertisement.

Other alternatives would be for me to limit which types of HTML could be used here using a strip_tags() function but by the time I went through and eliminated all the potentially dangerous ones, there wouldn’t be much left to work with.

Any other questions, just holler.

Ok, Works for me Boss. The only reason I ask is I use my e-mail to write and edit longer posts. I can fidel around with it and then just copy and paste it into a post on a thred. I think thats what HTML does..could be wrong…I’m not much of a computer geek. I type real sslloooooww.

I just thought of another pattern I’m gonna use again this summer. Be gone down in the bottoms a lot and come home late to my great sport of a wife and put my cold dinner in the micro wave!

WET NETS!

Sounds like you’re talking about copy and paste functions. HTML is different as it the building blocks of all websites.

Try this for Copy and paste here on IDA… (you’ll never use right click again after you go this route)…. highlight the text to be copied. Press CONTROL + C. This does the copy. To paste the text, place your cursor where you want the text to go and press CONTROL + V.

Works slick.

Hey Dark!
Nice to see you here. No. I haven’t taken up catfishing seriously, yet. But on a slow night at work I get to pretty much all the forums. You would know me as mm but on this site I’m dd. Talk to you later sir!

dd

dd,
I’ve been thinking about spending some time fishing for these river cats but haven’t made that first cast. Something we should look into I think.

Mudcat,

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this is one way they communucate between each other isnt it….as in pheremnones? different individiual fish (bullheads) in totally seperate areas may “smell” different…..and that could create a reaction to how flatheads bite.

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Last fall I stumbled on a catfishermans home page that talked about this. I wanted to find it again, but can’t.
He talked about holding a flathead in a garden pond and dropping bullheads in it from the river in which the flat was caught and then using bullheads from other lakes. He had a disclaimer about not being a scientific experiment, but just his observations.
It said that the flat move in on the bullhead from other areas faster, than the ones from it’s home waters.

As I was reading it, I remember thinking that it could make sense…but there were too many veriables to draw a solid conclusion…like is a (small) pond like a river? How long did the cat go without eating each time before being “fed”? Was it fed during the day with one and night for the other?

So let’s say…(for the heck of it) that this was true, then the smell of a “strange” bait would attract cats?

Seems to me at spawning time it doesn’t matter what kind of bait or where it came from matters. If it’s close to the nest it’s either going to get eaten or if it’s too big to get into the flats mouth, going to be bumped away.

Not sure about the rest of the year.