When the sun goes down, anglers can tangle with some of the region’s biggest flathead and blue catfish
On this very popular waterway, silence prevailed. No roaring boat engines disrupted the stillness. When the summer sunshine becomes too oppressive, many anglers seek more comfortable conditions and solitude after dark, when only an occasional fish grabbing an evening meal or the chorus of frogs punctuates the warm, humid air.
During the summer, most major waterways fill with fishermen and recreational boaters, even more so on weekends and holidays. Whirring boat propellers can shock fish and make them inactive. At night, wily old catfish lose some of their wariness and hunt for something to devour.
“At night, we usually don’t have to deal with many boats running around,” said Mike Haney, a professional catfish angler from Thaxton, Miss. “Most of the time, we’ll have the whole river to ourselves. Fish are more active at night during the summer because it’s cooler. During the day, catfish go under cover or in deep holes, but at night, they come out from under the banks and move around looking for food.”
Big flatheads hunker down in woody cover, such as logjams, fallen trees and stump fields, where they ambush prey. Flatheads traditionally feed at night, but do sometimes bite during the day. Voracious predators, they savor bluegills, shad, small catfish and other fish. They especially like bullheads, also called mudcats.
“Flatheads mostly feed at night, but we do catch them during the day,” said Rodney Crimm, a professional catfish angler and owner of Flathead Fever Tackle (662-640-1697, Flatheadfevertackle.com) in Ecru, Miss. “It’s a matter of putting the bait in front of the fish. We need to fish where they want to be.”
Boat position
To catch giant whiskerfish, people need to fish for the river monsters. People fishing new waters must search for good places. Darkness makes that harder, but with modern electronics, anglers can find many potential places to land a big catfish, even on the blackest night.
“If I’m fishing a new waterbody, especially at night, I’m going to look for fish and structure with side-scan sonar,” Haney said. “With that sonar, we can see structure under the water that we can’t see with our eyes. A fallen log might extend way out into the river much farther than we can see.”
After finding a good spot, boat position becomes critical. In the darkness, anglers can get a little closer to structure without spooking the fish. Approach as stealthily as possible. Anchor or spot-lock a casting distance upstream from any cover that might hold catfish. Place baits along the cover so the succulent juices and scents flow downstream in a huge catfish’s lair.
“When we pull up to a tree out in the river, we throw one bait close to the bank and stagger baits along the cover,” Crimm said. “We always want to put one bait out at the end of the tree. The current hitting the tree pushes bait out toward the end. That’s frequently where the biggest catfish stay, out in that deeper water.”
A fallen tree might hold both giant blues and flatheads. Anglers usually catch flatheads tighter to cover and huge blues more toward the middle of the channel. Larger blue catfish aggressively hunt for shad and other baitfish in open water. The biggest blues habitually follow baitfish schools in main channels and tributaries. In lakes, look for them in the main creek channels.
Best baits
For bait, all the traditional daytime enticements work just as well after dark. A blue catfish might eat anything, but like flatheads, the biggest ones prefer fish. Oily, pungent fish, like skipjack, usually make the best bait. A squirming live gizzard shad or small skipjack would tempt both flatheads and blues. A skipjack head and gut
section with pieces of abdomen flailing in the current looks alive. Many Louisiana anglers use live finger mullets or mullet chunks 3 to 4 inches wide. Vary the baits to see what works best.
“For flatheads, I mainly use live bluegills or mudcats,” said Lee Ray Rhodes, a catfish angler from Georgetown, La. “Mudcats are tough critters and will stay alive a long time. Usually, we put out six rods in holders and try several different baits at various depths to find what the fish want that day. I’ve caught more big cats on fish heads than anything else.”
Many anglers catch their own skipjack in nets or by casting small flies or jigs on light tackle. Officially named skipjack herring, these silvery fish populate many rivers throughout the Mississippi River system and its tributaries. Skipjack can live in both fresh and brackish waters. They grow to about 20 inches long. After catching skipjack, throw them on ice immediately. They go soft quickly, but when frozen can last a long time.
Strip baits attract both blues and flatheads. To make a strip bait, fillet off a side of a skipjack, gizzard shad or mullet. Thrust the hook through the ribcage for better support. In current, the trailing strip undulates like a live bait while oozing delectable juices like cut bait. Fish a strip bait just off the bottom so it stays in the current giving off scintillating action that big catfish can’t resist.
Set out several rods in holders, each baited with a different temptation. When fishing at night, some catfishermen attach small bells to their rod tips to let them know when a fish takes the bait. Others add small fiber optic devices or glowsticks that illuminate their rod tips to make them more visible.
Good lighting
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. Today, many LED, or “light-emitting diodes,” give off excellent brightness in smaller packages with less heat than other lights. They also drain considerably less power and don’t seem to attract as many insects as other lights, a major plus when fishing on hot summer evenings in the South.
“Anyone who plans to go night fishing needs to get some good lighting,” Crimm said. “We run a couple LED lights on the front of the boat and some lights on the rear so we can watch our rods and lines and see when we get bites.”
One never knows when a bite might happen. Anglers could be sitting for hours in one spot with nothing. Then, suddenly, all rods bend over at once.
“I set up by logjams, rock dikes, holes and eddies or any change in the current seam,” Rhodes said. “Often, we catch blues and flatheads at the same time. I’ll fish a spot for 15 or 20 minutes. If I don’t catch anything, I’ll move to another spot.”
Some nocturnal fishermen move constantly. With little to no other boat traffic after sundown, some catfish anglers pull planer boards, floating plastic blocks specifically angled to run either to the left or right when pulled behind a boat. Planer boards spread out lines, allowing anglers to cover more water and fish varied baits at different depths simultaneously. For night fishing, some people attach glowsticks or small LED lights to their planer boards.
“In a lake with no current, we drag planer boards over the ledges and flats holding baitfish,” Haney said. “On the Pearl River above Ross Barnett Reservoir, we’ve caught many big catfish suspended off the bottom by doing ‘suspend dragging’ on planer boards.”
Where to fish
Just about every freshwater and some brackish systems in Louisiana and Mississippi hold catfish. The Pearl River runs down through Mississippi and eventually forms part of the Louisiana-Mississippi line. The entire system holds good catfish.
Blue catfish can tolerate higher salinity levels better than other species, so they thrive in brackish estuaries and river deltas. In coastal waters, blue cats love crunching scrumptious mullets. In Louisiana, better catfishing places include the Lake Salvador area, Lac des Allemands, the Lake Verret area and Lake Maurepas, plus the rivers flowing through the Lake Pontchartrain Basin. Sometimes, anglers fishing for redfish and speckled trout catch big blues in Lake Pontchartrain.
Nothing in Louisiana or Mississippi beats the mighty Mississippi River, its tributaries and its major distributary, the Atchafalaya River, for producing river monsters. The Mississippi River produced many blues exceeding 100 pounds. All the oxbow lakes on both sides of the Mississippi River offer excellent catfish action. Although both rivers hold massive whiskerfish, swift currents, passing ships, and tugboats pushing long barge strings make those rivers dangerous places to fish, day or night.
The Red River, a major Mississippi River tributary, provides some of the best catfishing in the nation. Also try the Ouachita and Sabine rivers. Better known for double-digit bass, Toledo Bend holds some humongous catfish.
On those hot summer evenings, anglers can spend many enjoyable hours fishing the best honey holes with little competition. The only disturbance might come when a whiskered leviathan grabs a bait and the reel starts screeching!
