I was out Saturday night and it was an absolutely perfect night for chasing flatheads. We had almost a full moon, no wind and the water was perfectly calm, and there was a lot of baitfish activity throughout the river. The Twins game at Baltimore had a rain delay and the game started a couple of hours late which was perfect for a late night flathead catfish trip. The Twins eventually won and it was a great game to listen to.
My catfishing friends on the Minnesota River and the Mississippi are experiencing high water and lots of current from all the recent rains but the St Croix has not been affected much at all. The water temperature has dropped into low 70s but otherwise river conditions are pretty stable at normal late summer conditions.
I did not get out until just before sundown. All the islands were full of late season campers trying to get one last weekend in and the fireworks were popping. I do not have much luck on the main channel when the campers are out so I retreated to one of my favorite early season spots. It is pretty shallow this time of year and I was only finding 3 feet to 4 feet of water but the weather conditions were perfect and the area was full of bait activity. The only problem I had was a large Great Dane sized beaver that wanted me to leave in the worst way. He kept swimming by and slapping his tail around the boat – he was hard to ignore and I was worried that he was spooking away any fish.
I baited up with a couple of hardy 7 inch bullheads and put one out about 4 feet from shore in 2 feet of water and one just upstream from a beautiful logjam in 4 feet of water. Those bullheads started rocking and rolling right from the start – they were sounding off the bait clicker most of the night.
At 9:45pm I had a screeching clicker run on the logjam bullhead and hooked up with a nice fish. I had to horse the fish for a few minutes to get him out of the logs and then we played tag around the boat for about 10 minutes. I finally landed a nice 25# flathead about 37 inches long. This is my biggest flathead so far this year – I have had a tough season so far with 8 skunks in July and 5 in August. I have one more week of flathead chasing before sturgeon season is upon us. I know I can catch one bigger than this 25# fish.
nice catfish