School me on some catfish

Never "targeted" catfish. In laws are renting a lake house on Guntersville this week, so we spent this last weekend with them and will spend next weekend there. My BIL has a boat, but we also both have young kids so we were only able to get out and fish after bed time. Decided to try to target catfish without any preparation, and I caught 1. Since we will both be back next weekend, we decided we wanna give it a good try but don't know where to start.

Do you go deep, shallow, look for structure? Egg sinker and a circle hook on the bottom? Chicken Livers? We really would like to catch some to eat, not looking for those monsters.

Thanks for any help you can give me! If nothing else we'll go enjoy some beer.

Where's the house? I'm definitely not a pro at it, but I always start deep. I use a sinker, swivel, then circle hook. Basically a Carolina rig for Catfish. I either use live bluegill, or cut bait. Skipjack mostly.

Fur, it's right next to the Guntersville municipal airport. I can see the Guntersville yacht club from the dock.

Ive seen some colored fellas catch a pile of catfish under the big bridge. They were on the guntersville side fishing off the bank, so i would say 75-100ft out in the water. If you are sitting under the bridge looking toward guntersville, its on the right side. You can see where people sit and fish. I dont know for sure why catfish wouldbe there but ive seen alot of them caught there.

Brim heads are deadly on catfish. Fished on the bottom.

"Disclaimer": Not sure if it's legal. Fred or Matt can verify.

When I looked into it, it’s legal if you caught the bream with hook and line. Illegal if bream was caught with net or trap. I could be wrong though.

I'd probably put in below the dam and go up to just above the big power line that crosses the river. There's a hump midriver that drops back off gradually right about there and the blues and flatheads lay up waiting for injured or dead shad and skipjack to come drifting by. Starting at the dam and as far as there is a concrete wall along the turbine side there is also a concrete bottom with rip-rap starting below that. They will lay in that rip-rap at the end of the concrete bottom waiting for dinner too. I see a lot of boats anchored up but I personally like to drift down through there bumping bottom as I go. You lose a lot of terminal tackle but you cover a lot of water and I believe I hook more fish that way. (If boats are anchored watch very carefully and give them plenty of room) If the water is not running go home cuddle up to your wife and come back another time. If it's idling slowly they will often be up closer to the dam. Like real close, within casting distance. If it's rolling pretty good I'd concentrate most of my time downstream of the power-line. You can call ahead of time or look online to get an idea of how the water will be running. Like FF said, I like to use a Carolina rig of sorts. It's quick and easy to tie. If drifting a 1/2 to 1 oz egg sinker will work fine. If anchored you will likely need more. I like a regular baitholder hook 1/0 to 5/0, when drifting.

TVA 1 800 238 2264 Then dial 4 at the prompt then 29 at the next.
CFS < 20,000 is fairly slow
CFS 20,000-40,000 is what I consider midrange and
CFS > 40,000 is rolling pretty good
If it's > about 55,000 or 60,000 there's probably floodgates open.

That's Siebold creek. It's easy to get to deep water from there. You've got 2 bluffs right there at you. The Buck Island bluff is on your right as you head out towards the river, and the Short Creek bluff is on the left if you head towards the big river bridge. I don't know if either one of those areas hold catfish, but they're worth a look. You can also go in Short creek and go up towards the bridge and fish that channel. I've seen Richard Gene fish that area for cats. MM makes a good point too. Below the dam is very good catfishing, if you want to haul the boat down there.

Go get some fresh cracklins and sit them out in the sun for 2 days prior to going. Catfish will find you

Just do some noodles and put a live bream or shad on it and toss it out there.

Here's what works for me really well.

Guntersville

Get you some night crawlers if you want to catch plenty of eating sized cats. It's gonna be channel cats mostly.
You will catch an occasional blue or flathead. Lots of blue gill, random bass etc.

If you want to catch anything bigger than 10lbs, you need to use shad. Then skip jack then blue gill. That's my order.

Depends on what size you want and breed.

Big cats don't want no damn chicken liver or anything else. They want real food. Shad and skip jack.

You wasting your time fishing with anything else in my opinion. Throw that night crawler out there. I like keeping mine a foot or two off the bottom or so. Good eating and more action using that.

Never done this but I might try it this weekend. Sounds kind of fun.


Thanks Jakethesnake. I'll try that out.

Raw chicken (or Bar S hotdogs) cut into bite sized chunks placed into a ziplock bag. Add one package of powdered strawberry or cherry jello and 1/4 cup of Dale's steak seasoning. Mix well. It will catch all the eater sized catfish you want. Find a spot you think holds fish and drift it along the bottom. I use a float just above the hook to help keep the bait from snagging.

Thanks for the help guys. I tied on a circle hook (I saw that Gomer couldn't make them work so I figured I'd have no problem), and put a whole live bream on. Have caught a few more like this. BIL isn't back until tomorrow so I've just been fishing off the dock.

That pic says it all!!!

Small whole brim always seem to catch some cats. Great pic!

👍👍