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Current
Current can be a friend or an enemy on the river. I like just a
little bit of current on the river when I'm fishing for
flatheads, just about enough that it kind of rolls up behind the
boat while we are anchored down. If a barge
comes along the wake will want to push the boat away but the current
forces it to stay in one place. Too
much current and your baits don't stay stuck in one spot, the water
just boils in behind the boat. The baits
have a tendency to lift off of the bottom due to the amount of pressure
the current forces against the line. The
lines will want to gather directly behind the boat, resulting in
a tangled mess. Your anchor can get washed
loose from what ever it is hooked onto in times of high current
and that just creates more problems for you.
Speaking about
anchors, we like to use only one anchor and our anchor of choice
is the Crabclaw style and it is off the bow of the boat. We use
lots of rope - a minimum of 100 feet. The more rope that you have
out the
better" bite" you will get with your anchor. The wind
has to be hitting the side of the boat to force me to use
that second anchor, which I will lower over the side and attach
to the transom. You're taking a big chance
here doing this. We bring all our flatheads right along the side
of the boat, and if that second anchor is down
they always seem to find it.
Wind
On the river I don't like to have the wind blowing unless it is
coming straight over the bow of the boat towards the transom. Aluminum
boats sit high in the water and wind just kind of pushes them around.
A nice little breeze is ideal. I haven't caught too many flatheads
when it is dead calm, so I would much rather have a
slight breeze. Wind gives me all kinds of trouble when it is hitting
square into the transom. It wants to push
the boat back upriver and for my boat to be stabilized, that anchor
rope has to be taut. Use the thicker style
of anchor rope 5/8" is ideal - it won't cut into your hands
and is much easier to handle than the thinner anchor
line.
Bottom
compositions
For me concrete, rock, gravel ledges and wood log jams are the #1
places that feeding flatheads like to roam
in search of their next meal, followed by mud flats. Any combinations
of the above will up your chances of
boating a fish. Look for a transition from deep to shallow water.
Remember, baitfish like to hang near cover
and cover is almost always in shallow water, be it riprap, blown
down trees and/or stumps. It offers both protection and food for
a baitfish. Same goes for a flathead. He is lazy doesn't like to
get in that current so if
there is something out there that he can park behind and lay his
fat body on the bottom and rest waiting on a meal, he is going to
do it. He knows that baitfish are going to be near cover. Deep water
can hold cover in the form of logs, humps, or drop-offs. I seldom
look for fish on my depth finder. I look for the structure and cover
that I know will hold both baitfish and flatheads. Most of the time
your transducer will show about a 20-foot
area under your boat in deep water, and there is a lot of river
for a flathead to hide in and he can just be laying
outside of your sight zone. They can smell, taste and hear bait
as soon as it hits the water.
I'm going to
offer you several choices on how to fish for flatheads on rivers.
Now bear in mind sometimes you
have to use these in combinations with each other, they can be in
deep, shallow, or in both deep and shallow
water.
Deep water
patterns
You can use other things beside your electronics to locate deep
water. I watch the shoreline - hills are dead giveaways that the
water drops off fast to deep water and if the trees come all the
way down a hillside to the waters edge there roots will stick out
into the river and give catfish another ambush point. Large boulders
sticking out of the water are something else that indicate deep
water is nearby. Cliffs near the waters edge, barge tie up cylinders
are mainly in deep water and there is a huge washout hole on the
down river side.
Anywhere the river makes a sharp or hard turn the water will be
deep.
In
deep water look
for something that
can break current,
humps, drop-offs,
sunken barges, downed trees,
stumps or parts
of trees sticking
out of the water,
concrete in the
form of old dam
foundations, bridge
pilings or irregular
bottom contours. |
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Scour holes
are areas on the river bottom where it is kind of scooped out. Some
are deep, some are shallow
and the shallow ones are the ones that will hold large flatheads.
It only takes a twelve-inch deep scour hole to
hold a 40-pound flathead. The shallow scours are tough to find,
but if you find and locate one there will always
be a flathead laying in it. That is one of the reasons I own Lowrance
electronics. You have to be able to tell if
that's a cat or a rock on the river bottom. Fish on the up-current
side. You want your bait to be presented at
the head of the obstruction, resting flatheads lay behind obstructions,
feeding ones are always at the head.
Drop-offs
Drop-offs can be fished right on the edge or sometimes in the hole
itself, I prefer the edge method but I have
caught them right down in the holes. You want your bait near the
head of the drop-off right at the very top.
If you get it to far,
then your bait will
tumble down into
the hole and you
risk having a break
off from the line
rubbing on the edge of the drop-off. You must know
where the location
of your structure is
in relation of your
bait. |
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Ledges
Ledges, they are tricky to find and to see on a depth finder,
but most are made or developed where a creek
or another river runs into the Ohio.
In times of heavy flooding, the intake of a small river or
stream will cut into
the river bottom
forming what is
called a ledge.
They can also be
formed in the bends of the river
where the force of
the river will just
cut into the structure and trim
it away. |
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Shallow
water patterns
Lynn likes to fish shallow water with cutbait. I will fish it with
live, and most of the time I will spend most of the night netting
fish for her. She uses only cutbait and it goes totally against
what the experts say. I'm here to
tell you first hand that a flathead will jump on cutbait, and will
pass up a live bait. Our lines will be no farther
than ten feet from each other and time after time she will pickup
the flathead. When fishing shallow water we
spread our baits apart, she will throw one right up against the
bank in water no deeper than a foot. I have seen her throw a cutbait
right against the bank and a flathead will dig it out. Mine are
right next to hers away from
the shoreline.
One of our favorite
places to fish has a combination of several different things, First,
the water is deep going from 22 feet along a channel edge so the
barges have plenty of room to run if they are forced to the shoreline
and then flattens out parallel with the shoreline and runs to the
bank very shallow, the shoreline is all riprap to
prevent erosion, the bottom is all gravel, with a very distinct
drop-off at the end of it. There is also a creek that
feeds into the Ohio with a point.
In
the example to your right:
Flatheads can travel several ways,
they can work the deep water
channel which is in dark blue, they
can work the deep water drop off
again in dark blue or they can elect
to come up on the shallow gravel bar
which is represented with light blue,
most of the time there in the
shallows. The red pucks are places
that you should be placing your
baits. Current is a big factor with this
presentation, lots of current will force
them to the ledge or the channel or
to that point. They can always drop
into that deep hole that the stream
has cut into the river. Riprap which
is used to prevent erosion is
represented as the grey/black
area's. |
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Wood
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Wood
it has many forms and shapes. Trees can be
laid down in the water. These are current breakers and
it may be shallow looking and you wonder how a
flathead would ever relate to this tree but they will get
in there looking for food. Even those brush piles you
see here will hold flatheads.
At night
you must be very quiet while in a boat and
fishing shallow water. It doesn't take much to spook
them. Drop something on the bottom or bang into the
side of the boat and they will be off and gone.
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Stumps
sticking out of the water. Flatheads will
relate to some of the smallest things I have ever
seen, like just a small stick up out of the water.
I like to fish wood cover when there is plenty of
current, it breaks the current well. Bluegills and
shad will gather in the area, it can be very hard to
fish, you're going to get hung up no doubt about that,
but wood attracts flatheads and again - they will be
laying behind the stuff and letting the current go over
top of their heads. |
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Slow to medium
current will make them move to the shallow bar. Again you must find
out what pattern the
fish are in.There is a down side to fishing the shallow water. Gars
can drive you crazy, they like cutbait but
are very fond of live squirming shad.
Mudflats/Sandbottoms
Mudflats/Sandbottoms are just as the name implies. The bottom is
mud or sand or a combination of both,
but there are times when the action can be furious. You need current,
the scent of the bait or the struggling
bait fish has got to get downstream. Sometimes I think flatheads
just like to get in this stuff and settle down
in it. When fishing mud covered bottom with live bait I prefer the
three way rig. You want your bait to be just
up from the bottom of the silt or goo. They don't survive to well
when they are suspended in that stuff. The
flatheads that we have caught on mudflats/sandbottoms are covered
from head to tail with the stuff - their
white belly's are chocolate brown and it is hard to wipe off suggesting
that they are bedded down in it. We
have seen flatheads covered with this silt when we have netted them.
Usually there is deep water or a
channel nearby.
Look to the
shore. If the land is flat and just runs off into the river and
you see sand along the shoreline, most
generally the bottom will be the same. Again, you're fishing in
shallow water. Gars again inhabit this same
area. If there are stumps or wood it makes it that more appealing
to a flathead.
Don't be afraid
to try something different or out of the ordinary. You have to experiment!
There are way too
many factors that can make a difference in boating flatheads or
just drowning bait. Don't be afraid to move,
if you don't get a pick-up in thirty minutes, then move to a different
spot. On the average Lynn and I will hit
ten to twelve spots a night unless we start pounding them. But if
they stop biting we move on, but we will
return to that same spot after a couple of hours. When flatheads
are feeding they are on the move constantly,
they will slide in and out of areas. They will take time to rest,
but there main function is to chow down and it
takes a lot of fresh or cutbait to fill one of these biggins up.
A couple of
hours before the sun comes up it seems like they go on a major killing
spree. Like Vampires of
the water, they must feed while it is dark then flee to their deep
water haunts before the morning sun removes
the cool chill in the air.
Tim & Lynn
Lange
JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ
I can be reached at at my email address<plange@woh.rr.com>
or look for me out on the "Brown" this spring but,
when the river warms up then I'm off to there!
Thanks,
Tim "Doc" Lange
Doc's
Website: <http://www.hookedoncatfish.com>
Ohio River Catfishing at it's finest.
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