A couple nights ago I went to the dam and as I got out of my car in the parking lot, next to the dam, I seen a couple guys who were there the night befor when I was. I asked if anything was biteing and they said one guy hooked into a nice one and it emptyed his reel and then broke the line. He said he had his drag tightened down all the way, pulled his pole out straight and still he couldn’t turn it. It emptyed his reel and then broke the line when the reel was empty. Another guy said he got into one about 30 pounds and walked it down the handrail over and around all the people who were also fishing for flatheads and landed it by walking down to the rivers edge. These were both caught on fresh cutbait because these guys ran out of bluegills. Someone had caught a quillback and threw it on the bank, they smashed it with their foot to get it to where they could cut it up for bait. One guy used part of the head and the other guy used a large strip of skin, scales with some flesh and put that on their hook, they both described what portion of the fish they used. Both of these were caught in shallower water and underneath the road deck of the dam. The flatheads that I posted pictures of yesterday were also caught in shallower calmer water too.
An old friend of mine has got a 32lber and a 20lber in his fish cage that a guy gave him that were also caught on cutbait night befor last. I went out their to get my tractor tiller running and do some tilling and thats when he told me that this guy brought them out to him. The bait cage is next to the edge of the water so its easier to put bluegills in, when guys catch them, and its smaller then the fish cage that we put our fish in and thats what the guy put the fish in lol. Its a cage about 2-1/2 ft. square but he got them both in to it. He had to call Paul a younger guy to take them out of the baitcage and put them in the fish holding cage thats out farther in the water and you have to walk in the boat thats tied up to get to it because its a bigger cage. George said he didn’t know how they both fit into the baitcage so Im sure they were in there like sardines. I didn’t look at them but will when we clean fish here in a few days along with the channels their getting.
With the water up in the backwaters they rebaited their ditty poles late yesterday and hes going to call me this morning to let me know how many and what they got. Their getting all channels on the dittypoles and no flatheads because theres so many channels in this portion of the river above the dam.
In this portion of the river when setting dittypoles for flatheads the poles are set in similar parts of the water but its a little diffrent. Setting in calm water next to deep water is one area. It can only be a few feet square and you’ll get them. Large areas of shallow water is where you get 99% of the channels, the areas where you’ll get flatheads on ditty poles is right next to deeper water, they come into these smaller shallower calmer areas next to deep water to feed. You’ll get big flatheads in shallower water too, sometimes just a ft. deep but it depends on how hungry they are and what that stretch of the river looks like and where the fish are that they eat. Anyway the flatheads are biting here also on cutbait besides bluegills.