What do the channel cat do once the thermocline sets in?... I'm still learning how to catfish,and have had a few good trips with my kids, but the last three trips wer terrible...I'm fishing a good looking horseshoe bend in a creek that's about 17' deep in the creek, and about 12' on top of the bend... I heard some guys that were crappie fishing say the thermocline had set up at about 14'...so what do the catfish do?.. Go shallow?..Suspend?..if they don't go bellow the thermocline,this eliminates the whole deeper end of the lake... I'm kinda lost...I heard Chad Ferguson say he fishes for them year round in 5' of water.. but that water will be really hot and their is no bait fish there... what do y'all say?

They won't be below the thermocline for sure. No oxygen there.

Yea, they are suspend. But, check out the thermocline on your sounder...that sounds shallow. Should be more like 19-21ft

What about if you're bank fishing? What are some tips for locating deeper water off the bank?

http://webapp.navionics.com/#@6&key=ocwgEn_llQ



The $10 Navionics phone app is well worth it too. It uses your phone's GPS to show you precisely where you are standing.

What about just reading water depth from the bank? Sometimes when you look out over the water, you can see a smooth surface and then adjacent to it you see a more wavy and choppy water. Does that have anything to do with the depth? I know on rivers when you see a smooth surface it indicates deep water. But the reason for that phenomenon on rivers, is that the slope and elevation of the river bed is changing, combined with a flow of water a calm surface would be present in deep areas of the river and rough in the shallows. I notice something similar when I'm fishing off the bank by a lake. However water does not have the same type of flow in a lake versus a river. Can anyone comment on this?