AT2021 wrote:
Hi everyone, just recently moved to the Prattville area and looking for some help identifying places I can bank fish for big blues and flatheads. I came from Knoxville TN where we would bank fish for them in the Tennessee river using cit bait like shad and skipjack.
Any and all help would be appreciated!
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Alabama River Capitol Cats;
After dark, the city sleeps while catfish go on the prowl.
Low, thick overcast blocked out the moon while a light mist shrouding the channel made visibility difficult.
We idled up the gloomy ribbon of water barely discernible with the navigation lights as we prepared to anchor near a fallen tree.
“This is the spot,” proclaimed Mike Haney, a professional catfish angler. “I’ve caught some good fish here by this fallen tree.
When catfish are on the prowl for food, they move up shallow.
We target the fish a little differently at night than during the day.
At night, instead of looking for deep holes, we look for places where cats might feed, like a flat or a sandbar near a hole.
We also look for ledges and drop-offs where fish can work up into shallow water. We’ll fish the sandbar and the ledges around the deep water.”
Barely a few yards away from downtown, we anchored the boat and deployed the lines as close to the cover as possible.
Although surrounded by a state capitol metropolitan area holding about 400,000 people, all remained relatively quiet.
Through the light patter of rain drops smacking into the canvas top over our heads, we occasionally heard a distant car horn or a loud bang from the nearby railroad yard along the river as the night shift hooked up cars.
No boat engines broke the silence on this normally heavily travelled river running adjacent to an urban setting.
Rodney Crimm, a professional catfish tournament angler, shows off a flathead catfish he caught one night while fishing the Alabama River near Montgomery.
“Even with the city right there, catfish don’t get much pressure on the Alabama River, especially at night,” Haney said. “
In daylight, many people fish the river, but mostly for bass or crappie.
At night, we can target big catfish practically anywhere we want to go and don’t need to compete with many other anglers or worry about people blowing by in a big boat and running us up against the bank.”
The Alabama River passes through the Montgomery metropolitan area separating the capital city from Prattville and other outlaying towns.
The entire system can provide exceptional catfish action, but some of the best fishing for Cotton State river monsters occurs around greater Montgomery.
However, that whiskered resource goes largely ignored by most people living in the metropolitan area.
Just downriver from Montgomery, Rick Conner landed an 80-lb. flathead catfish near Selma to set the state record for that species.
“Channel, blue and flathead catfish populations are very good on the Alabama River,” said Michael P. Holley, the Alabama Wildlife & Freshwater Fisheries Division district fisheries biologist for the area.
“It is not uncommon to see flathead catfish and blue catfish in excess of 20 pounds.
The biggest I have heard about recently was a flathead that was probably between 50 and 60 pounds, but the weight was not verified on certified scales.”
With a major population center so close, the Alabama River and associated waters become crowded during warmer months.
Fishermen, recreational boaters, water skiers and people in personal watercraft run up and down the channels, especially on weekends and holidays, exercising their right to enjoy their preferred form of fun.
Such activity can shock fish and make them inactive.
In waters with frequent boat traffic, fish usually hunker down in the deepest water during daylight hours to get away from roaring engines and whirling propellers.
They move very little and feed less. At night, though, all becomes quiet except for an occasional splash of something grabbing an evening meal.
In the darkness, big catfish lose a bit of their wariness and become more aggressive.
All three flavors of catfish—blues, channels and flatheads—can come from the Alabama River in Montgomery.
“During the day, boat traffic affects fishing more than at night,” Haney said.
“We’ve noticed that suspended catfish tend to drop down to deeper water when motors keep going over them, especially the bigger outboards.
Also, during the day, temperatures get hot during Alabama summers, so catfish go under cover or in deeper holes where the water is a little cooler.
At night, fish are on the move and feeding more often than during the day.”
Throughout most of the year, flatheads remain more active at night.
Blues and channel cats feed day or night.
When darkness falls on summer nights and quiet prevails over peaceful waters, all catfish come out of their holes and hiding places to more aggressively hunt for prey.
“From tracking studies using electronic tags placed on catfish, we know that catfish seem to be more active at night,” Holley confirmed.
“That is likely related to them feeding more at night.”
Big blue catfish tend to roam more than other species.
Huge blues habitually follow baitfish schools in the main river channels, but sometimes move up into the tributaries.
More territorial than roving blues, flatheads use their mottled camouflage to hide in thick cover like stumps, logjams or fallen trees where they wait to ambush prey.
When they spot something they like, they gulp it down their cavernous mouths.
“Flathead catfish do not move nearly as much as blue and channel catfish,” Holley said.
“Flatheads like woody structure where they can lay still and ambush prey.
Areas along the main river channel with stumps and logjams or rocky areas are prime locations to target flatheads.
Although anglers can catch blues in these same areas, blue catfish tend to hang out in open water more than flathead catfish.”
Day or night, how one catches large catfish remains essentially the same.
First, anglers must find them.
Scan the bottom with good electronics to locate likely spots that might hold giant whiskerfish.
Look for holes, drop-offs, boulders, sunken trees and other cover.
“The Alabama River has deep water, shallow water and plenty of structure,” Haney said.
“When looking for catfish, we side-scan an area at about 2 to 4 miles per hour.
When scanning, we look for bait, but bait can be deceiving.
In a spot with a lot of bait, it can be hard to catch catfish because they already have so much natural food to eat.
We find the better fish on the Alabama River suspended in structure.
Most of the fish we catch on the Alabama River are from 20 to 27 feet deep.
The river has some current, but when they release water through the dams, the bite improves.
When that flow hits structure, the structure pushes the current down to the bottom where it kicks up debris.
That kicks up baitfish and other things that catfish can eat. Frequently, catfish will lay under that structure waiting to grab something to eat.”
During daylight hours, drifting down a river with the current makes an effective way to find big catfish since anglers can cover so much more territory quicker.
At night, though, drifting with limited visibility could be dangerous.
On a night with fog or mist, visibility plunges to nearly zero. Drifting boaters can’t see snags, floating logs or other objects.
Therefore, when darkness cloaks the land, most anglers find a good spot to stay for a while.
Anchor about a casting distance up from any snags, fallen trees, holes or other places that might hold catfish.
In the darkness, anglers can’t see to make long casts, but they can move a little closer to prime cover without spooking fish.
“In the darkness, we try to get a little tighter to structure than in the daytime,” said Rodney Crimm, also a professional catfish angler.
“In the day, we can see the bait traveling through the air and stop it where we want it to land, but at night, we can’t see as well to make accurate casts.
At night, we almost always look for some woody structure or a steep drop-off. We want to catch those fish coming up out of a deep hole where they spent the day.”
Place baits just upstream from catfishing lairs. Let juices and scent from succulent baits flow downstream in a catfish’s amazing sensory organs.
With thousands of taste buds in its skin, a catfish swims through the water like an enormous tongue tasting everything.
A catfish can detect tiny food particles or scents down to one part in 10 billion parts of water over long distances.
Catfish can even detect prey with tiny electro-sensors in their heads.
Every living cell emits a minute electrical field. Combined with outstanding sight and acute hearing, catfish use their amazing sensing abilities to detect prey or food even on the blackest nights in the muddiest waters.
For bait, all the traditional daytime enticements work just as well after dark.
Blue and channel catfish eat practically anything they can find, but many anglers prefer live bait at night because the squirming creatures give off vibrations.
At any time, flatheads characteristically want a squirming fish to munch and readily devour threadfin or gizzard shad, skipjack, bream, other catfish.
They especially like bullheads. In Alabama, anglers can legally use bream caught on a rod and reel, but they must obey all size and creel limits.
Here’s a normal setup for fishing after the dark in the Alabama River.
“Flatheads are voracious predators,” Holley said.
“While flatheads eat cut bait occasionally, they tend to want live prey.
For flatheads, I recommend using live bluegill or gizzard shad.
Fish live bait near the bottom in good habitat areas.
Flatheads feed up before spawning. The recovery from spawning is another major feeding time for catfish. That usually occurs from late May through July.”
Although big flatheads normally grab living prey, they might slurp a fish steak or strip bait, particularly if it looks alive.
A head and gut section with pieces of abdomen flailing in the current looks alive.
Fished a foot or 2 off the bottom, a skipjack or gizzard shad fillet hooked through the ribcage undulates in the current like a live fish while oozing tempting juices.
Big blue cats also love these baits.
“We tend to do better with blue cats when fishing some type of cut bait like skipjack, shad or bluegill,” Crimm said.
“In the day, we sometimes use less live bait than at night. When specifically targeting flatheads, we’ll use more live baits.”
Many anglers rig several rods, each baited with a different temptation, to see what cats want at that time.
Many anglers also engage the clickers on their reels to create noise when a big cat runs with a bait.
Some cat-fisher-men attach small bells to the tips of their rods that jingle when a fish takes the bait.
Others add small fiber optic devices or glowsticks that illuminate their rod tips to make them more visible or some combination of noise and light makers.
Anglers can even buy entire rods that glow in the dark or some with tips specially made for night fishing.
Some lines come in blueish tints to reflect light better than others and become more visible for fishing at night. That way, fishermen can spot nibbles easier.
“We use B’n’M Silver Cat Elite and Silver Cat Magnum catfish rods with Abu Garcia 6500C reels with 40-lb. test Ande for the main line and 50-lb. test Big Game for the leader,” Haney said.
“We fish with sinker slides because if we get in heavy current, we can easily add more weight to it.
We use 8/0 to 12/0 Flathead Fever circle hooks. With circle hooks, we just let the fish take the bait and start reeling them in.”
Obviously, night fishermen need good lighting to see cover and do their rigging.
In the old days, fishermen used hand-held flashlights or lit gasoline lanterns. However, lighting technology greatly improved in recent years, making fishing after dark much easier.
Today, many LED, or “light-emitting diodes,” give off excellent brightness in smaller packages with less heat than other forms of illumination.
They also drain considerably less power. In addition, LED lights don’t seem to attract as many insects as other lights, a major plus when fishing on a hot summer evening in Alabama.
Anglers can also use LED or other headlamps to keep their hands free. Always use just enough light to perform functions and only for as long as necessary.
Boaters could permanently install light fixtures in strategic places or set up temporary lights.
Battery-powered LED strips come in many sizes and configurations so people can attach them to their boats, chairs or other equipment.
Some lights come with magnets so anglers can stick them to any metallic surfaces.
Other anglers put Velcro strips where they want to hang temporary lights. Anglers can also secure lights where they want them with plastic Zip Ties.
“Anyone who plans to do a lot of fishing a night needs to get some good lights,” Crimm recommended.
“Putting LED light strips along the back of the boat where the rod-holders go gives anglers a big help.
They don’t put off too much light but enough that we can see when we get bites on the rods.”
Some boats come equipped with plug-in running lights that people can store during the daytime.
When anchored and fishing off the back of the boat, some anglers plug the white stern light into the socket where the red and green bow lights would normally go when running the boat in the darkness.
With the brighter stern light placed in such a way, it provides enough illumination to see, but the bright light attracts bugs to the far side of the boat, leaving anglers less bothered.
A note of caution, always power additional lights with a separate source than the battery used to crank the engine or only use those lights sparingly and for a brief time.
“When we get to where we want to fish at night, we set up two LED pods attached to T-bars to help us see,” Haney said.
“We shine them off the back of the boat so we can see our rods and where we’re throwing.”
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