What is your hookup percentage?

Bottom lip with the point down. Sounds weird but we hooked into all of our flats that way. Hook was either in the side or the bottom of the lip.

Marc, where’s your pics from last night?

I agree with Hanson, sometimes I know I set the hook on non-flatties, whether that means walleyes, debris, or whatever. I’d rather be safe than sorry, as he says. You pretty much know going into it that it’s not a fish, but sometimes you get some clicker action, then you feel some weight, whether it’s a snag or whatever, and you really don’t want to yank it out of their mouth slowly!

On a somewhat related topic, my buddy hooked into a 4.5 lb sheepie the other day with a 5-6 inch bullhead on a 10/0 gama octopus hook! That was cool, haven’t seen a sheepie eat something that big before! So just note that if you’re using Bob’s bullies, you can get anything between sheepshead and 35 pound flatties!

I’ve been hooking the bullies in the bottom lip, point down. I suppose I could try point up for the next few outings and see if it makes a difference, it seems like it would be more optimal…

Hooking trough the upper lip works well.. its just tough to get the hook in. You must support the head well while trying to get the hok to penetrate.. slight twisting motion of the hook until the point breaks through help a lot.

You really dont need as big of hook if your head hooking the bullheads.. especially if the bullhead is 7″ long or less. I usually run a 7/0 hook on the smaller bullheads.

I wish it was possible to film a flathead in various bites. These are all great points on what is going on when they hit. They do inhale baits in their natural feeding tendencies… but natural feeding tendencies doesnt involve a chunk of lead wedged into something on the bottom restricting the bait from being pulled in like a vaccum cleaner would do. I know these fish are initialy trying to inhale the bait, but often, I think it barely makes it into the mouth which results in more chomping(trying to get it down). This is why we see them continualy chomping when the fish just sit there after the initial strike… Other times the fish slam it and instantly pull clicker which suggest they attacked the bait probably moving from point A to scoop it up and heading back, or, thy grabbed it when on the move. I think this is when the fish take the bait and cruise with it steadly, and stop before too long to try to put the bait down if it didnt get inhaled on the strike. When you get the steady pull and the jerking while they are moving, it might just be that the fish are gulping as they are swimming.

Its all jut theory..as far as we know, th fish could be often taking in the bait while moving along or still and the thumps after the initial strike may sometimes be the fish trying to expel the bait when they may have partilly embeded the hook on the strike.

All I know is when the fish are feeding very agressively, its really hardto do anything wrong.. they grab the bait and put it down and look for more, they are not playing around. Other times they do mess with the bait for whatever reason making it very difficult to hook up. Maybe its not the bait of choice and the fish are reluctant to eat it in the 1st place? Other times they get very picky and wont grab anything but a ultra-fresh piece of choice cut bait and when they do hit it, thy gently scoop i up and camp there wtth it when the week before they would smack te biggest most active thing out there and devour it instantly.

I dont have the answers.. but I have plenty of speculation over what the fish are doing because it ALWAYS seems to change about every week, i always has, and it always will. I have never found anything that works the same all the time(unless it doesnt work at all). To expect these fish to be dong everything in the exact same way as they do things in the most prime feeding times of the year is a bad mistake and your goin to miss out on lots of fish if yu stay in the same mold.

Right now, the initial pre-spawn time in minnesota flathead waters is the absolute, most prime season of the year and will continue to be so until the majority of the fish start to spawn.. and things will change overnight like thy do every year. Right now the attitude will be differant whn one can hardly do anything wrong by putting a bait down in any good area… things will change in about a month and success rates will alter greatly.

Alter your presentations and do what you gt to do in any given circumstance..what orks best is the right thing todo.. but it could change 200 yards down river, or be a completely dfferent world a week later.

Sorry for the *book* and the bad editng… is tme for me to buy a new keyboard!

Very good reading guys! Thanks for sharing your insight. Keep up the good work.

Ya …What he said….
Keep it up guys

It was a tuff night last night for hookups.

Three very little guys to the boat…two dropped baits and one (good one) in the wood.

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It was a tuff night last night for hookups.

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Just when I go and open my mouth with some advice, the game changes. The last couple nights out, we’ve run into a LOT of short runs. They’ll run 2-3′ and either sit there or drop the bait. There were a number of times with rod in hand, ready to give ’em the ‘onion’, when they drop it. One of these areas with a ton of short clicker activity did produce 5 flatheads so we know a majority of that short run stuff was flatheads, but its really frustrating to feel these fish dropping baits when you are ready to swing. From talking with other guys on the river, they experienced some of this activity as well.

Is it very strange (interesting) how we see so much variance from night to night. Last night seemed like it was short runs and misses. Looking at the log, many times fish are caught in the same 1/2 hour time frame by boats in completely different locations. And in a 24 hour time frame that window can shift as much as an hour.

Do you think maybe the shorter runs has to do with them started to spawn or be close to spawning? To me dropped bait means the fish are territorially hitting the bait to kill them or whatever the reason. On these misses, are the bullheads coming back still on the hook? Also, it seems the smaller fish are more frequent and not dropping the bait, which would reinforce this thought as they are not sexually mature. So they aren’t territorial or aggressive for any other reason than they want to keep eating.

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Just when I go and open my mouth with some advice, the game changes.

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That was sound advice right there! We had a few misses last night, but the hookup ratio was still respectable. I dont think any of our fish we caught moved more than 5′.

The channels seem to be more on the hunt now, the spawn might be ending. Bigger channels will be caught right along with the flatheads… just because the productivity is good on the flatheads, you cant write off the channels. The channel we got last night hit just like the flats were. It was a coincidence that I had a run about the same time that was a missed hit(ripped off bait) I wanted to suspect it was a channel too, but channels dont usually head out slow and steady, but the caught channel did.

Fish grabbing the bait and dropping it usually suggest its not the preferred bait of what is taking it.. or the fish felt the hook on the bite and are trying to drop it.

I had a channel-disrupted night on Saturday too – I had at least 4 bluegills crushed by channels, and none in the boat. Of two flathead hits by my reckoning, I caught one and missed one. Then to end the night I had a walleye or something shred another bluegill – wouldn’t suspect a northern considering it was past midnight, but you never know. Not really a gar spot either. The thing just kept hitting and letting go – I figured channel and left it out there so it could scoop it up when it had it killed, but when I finally brought it in it was all tore up. Probably some danged wimpy 10 pound walleye.

Speaking of wimpy walleyes, did I ever tell about the time my buddy had one on and figured it was just the bullhead? He kept having a hit and I’d tell him to check it, but he said it didn’t look like much of a fish – must be the bull. Anyway, when he reeled it in at the end of the night he had a 9 pound walleye on. Still good bait, mind you, but if you’re going to use ’em, you don’t want the hook buried in their throats…

My buddy caught a 4.5 pound sheepshead on a 5-6 inch bullhead last Tuesday. So, I would guess that some of the short run stuff might be big sheepies? Of course if you catch 5 flatties in the area in the next 3 hours you can bet a lot of the earlier hits were flatties too, that’s for sure!

A good way to miss one tonight would be to run at the clicker noise with your headlamp on. I have to make another rod holder. I don’t seem to miss fish with the reel engaged, even though I set the drag rather light. But with just the clicker for resistance, not so good here.