Went fishing last night near Lynxville dam on Mississippi River. Live suckers for bait. Anchored above brush piles and trees in 3 to 10 feet of water near deep holes all night. Buddy caught small channel and a decent northern. Not much for 12 hours of fishing. Something I should be doing different or was it just a slow night?
Don’t be afraid to try in those holes as well. Start in the head of the hole and work to the tail. I reposition my baits at least every 1/2 hour. Later in the summer I have more luck in deeper water than up in the shallow brush it seems.
Move around more.
First off, no fish you just show up and catch without investing a little time and effort learning how.
Start with google “Flatheads”.
Read all Flathead on IDO.
Life and Times in Catfish Country is a good and fun read.
Few higher level observations that may or may not help you:
Pike – are found in LOW current areas. Flatheads want some current. I don’t think you’ll find one and the other in the same location.
My advice for starters is to stop trying to use live bait and stop trying to fish at night. I made a video on using sheepshead for cutbait. When you use this method, you can spend as little or as much as 5 to 20 minutes in a single spot. If you don’t get bit in 5 minutes, the percentage of getting bit before 20 minutes hits is small. This allows you to LEARN how to FIND flatheads, because you will MOVE MOVE MOVE until you get bit. Yesterday after catching bait it took me 9 minutes to catch my first big flathead, though i lost it at the boat, it was over 30 lbs. Monday it took me 1.75 minutes.
Literally if you put the bait in front of their faces, it happens VERY FAST. If the bait isn’t in front of their face is just don’t happen!
Live bait is typically a presentation style where you position yourself to be in a travel path of the flathead. This requires you to know where they are and where they will be…Much more complicated than dumping a bait in the water and moving after a few minutes. Live bait doesn’t take kindly to repeated casts. Live bait doesn’t take kindly to failed hook sets. Cut bait does – on all accounts.
Flathead are very predictable when you begin to understand what current strength they prefer. This goes for ALL species of fish, in a river system.
Channel cats (Big class, not fiddlers) will prefer more current than flatheads. HUGE SHEEPSHEAD (OVER 10 LBS) prefer current SLIGHTLY less than flatheads. Smaller sheephead, prefer significantly less current than flatheads and will be found in similar current to small fiddler channel cats.
Why is this important information – using other fish to find the desired fish.
Anyway, my advice is simple. Quit doing what your doing, try a style of run/gun fishing with cut bait until your learning curve has advanced to a point where you can be proficient at running live bait. I’d venture to guess that if you are successful at the run/gun approach with cut bait you’ll soon forget about live bait fishing flatheads and realize that you can catch just as many and just as big at NOON than you can fighting the bugs and late nights. Hey, some just prefer that style, but my Flathead fishing ends at sunset!
Every fish you catch, consider a way of quantifying the current you found them in. Find the current, find the fish…and visa versa. Most the water i fish for flatheads the surface current is not an indicator of the current in which they are sitting in. I.E. i might be in heavy current, but i’m fishing a depression in a rip rap where the current is reduced. It isn’t the current the boat is in that is important, but the current the FISH is in.
Right now, i’m finding flatheads in some pretty hefty current. Not in the heaviest of the main channel currents of course, but in tight relation to them, but reduced current….i.e. i’m constantly looking over my shoulder at main channel traffic as i’m hugging the main channel.
Water’s warm. Fish are post spawn and on the chew! MOVE MOVE MOVE.
Good luck.
Great information FBRM.
Listen to Fish Blood. He knows the way.
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