Tim Stiffler who works with me is fishing out of the back of the boat, there is very little current, but there is a drop off, along a channel edge with about a 13 foot water depth. Watch your depth finder for these kinds of areas,with that kind of depth you will only see around about a 4.5 foot radius so you may not see fish on your finder, anchor down and give it a half hour, no bites move on. Drop offs are very hot areas for both Flatheads and Channel catfish. You want to look for the sharp breaks not the gradual depth changes but the abrupt depth changes. Flatheads are not fond of current they like to lay behind structure and they have been known to lay behind each other, when they start to feed then they are on the move to shallow water areas but they do not like to leave the security of the deep water haunts.
Tim likes to move the bait a little bit every now and then, if you are fishing with fresh cut bait it helps to get those succulent juices flowing down river, and sometimes thats all it takes just a little movement and a Channel or Flathead will smack your bait.
Fish with both live bait and cutbait, I learned a very hard lesson in the last tournament my son and I fished in 1998. You can make live bait dead, but you can't make dead bait live. We had two large Flatheads picked off of an area we were fishing because I didn't think that the Flatheads would touch livebait during the day.We were fishing near some icebreakers on the river I had decided to take just fresh cut bait and had failed to check the river conditions, water temp.was sixty-five degrees which is the prime temp. for Flatheads,and the other fishermen had live bait in there boat and we did not. It resulted with us coming up empty handed. Blues and Channels and Flatheads like live bait and will pound it if it looks like an easy meal, I now try to fish with both live and fresh cut till I find out what they want. I'm glad I learn from the mistakes I make, you make them only once and you never forget what you did wrong because you can always make it right.
Keeping your bait Alive!
Let's talk about how to keep the fish that catch the fish, alive so you can keep catching fish! We are talking about baitfish, Shad and Bluegills.
Of the two the Shad are the toughest to keep alive, mainly because of two things, oxygen or the lack of oxygen and stress.
Oxygen is very important to shad, ever watch one in the water? Watch them next time, they can burn up the water fleeting back and forth playing having a good ole time and this burns up oxygen, which requires even more to maintain the style of living they are used to.
That is why you have to keep them in a round style tank, they like to swim in circles and like the constant movement of the water. Keep the water in the tank clean by changing it periodicaly and if you see foam start to develop two conditions can cause this, dirty water and Ammonia.
Foam robs the water of oxygen which will start stressing the shad out. There are plenty of commercial products out there but you can use coffee creamier and it will do the same thing. Shad that you see in a tank that are rednosed are shad that are lacking oxygen, and or are stressed out, overcrouding can cause this also.
Bluegills are easy to maintain. Keep the water cool and keep it clean and they will last during a full days trip. In Ohio you are not allowed to catch a bluegill in a cast net, only by a hook, I know seems kind of dumb since your going to use them for bait but the Man has watched me throw them back in the water and always comes looking in the tank, rules are rules and I abide by them.
Another tip to try: Keep the water salty about two or three cups for a thirty gallon tank. It dosen't bother them in fact they seem to enjoy the salt, shad love it and the bluegills thrive in the stuff, but they will stay much better in the salty water than in plain ole water.
My first shad tank that I made was made from a 30 gallon plastic barrel cut in half, fashioned a lid and this thing worked real well until it got hot and then they started going belly up. Shad are very tempature sensitive so maintain the water tempature so it is cool and they will thrive much better. Now I own a Superbait Tank 2 Livewell Sytem that has a filtering unit and I can add chemicals to the filtering side to balance the shad in the tank area, it has two inch foam insulation all around and is white to reflect the suns rays. Clean the tank after you use it and scrub it out good, I use dishwashing soap and some elbow grease and a good rinse job to keep the tank in good shape.
My son Larry with two Flatheads that you may be asking yourself whats so special about them, Well both of these fish hit Bluegills as big as your Hands!!!
Here is Frank Vanwinkle
with a 44# Flathead
that busted a ten inch
live shad.
Must have been hungry!!!
Myself with a 11.5 pound Flathead
