Good afternoon yall,

It's been a long while that I've posted on the Catfishing forum.

I would like to say first, thanks for yalls help on catfishing.
Even though I dont fish for cats that much (I'm more of an Inshore guy), I often bring home a few for supper whenever I do.

Here's a photo of me at Brazos River this past weekend. I've invited a friend over as she hasn't gone fishing in over a year.
She had a blast hooking, fighting, and landing them.

We were there from late morning to mid-afternoon. With light winds out of the NE, we were casting in areas with steady current and depths greater that 5ft.

Between the two of us, we caught over a dozen cats (mix of Channels & Blues), but there were only 4 keepers. Still, we fried them up that night and they came out great.



100% of the time, I'm using dipbait (Secret 7) on a sponged Kahle hook on a Santee Rig.

The only issue is that I often have lots of small cats biting it and I'm having to re-dip every 10-15 mins.
This past weekend was no exception. You can feel the small ones striking the bait as soon as you cast into the water.


I remember once that yall advised that Live Shad is the best if you want to bring it great size cats (well over 5 lbs).

How do I go about on finding Shad in a river? Or do I just blind cast with a cast net?
What about in lakes?


My friend wants to tag along again the next time we got a free weekend.
And she wants to fight & land that 10 pounder

Adan very cool taking your lady friend Catfishing-
I haven't fished the rivers in quite a few years but I will say I have caught more bigger fish using FRESH (not frozen) Shad and other cut bait, I would include chicken breast in there also-
I wouldn't usually catch bigger numbers; but generally Bigger fish-
Should be the same in rivers or lakes-but if somebody has a different experience, I bet they chime in-
I assume you are gonna be netting from the bank, you should be able to still get to them from the bank ok, but I would go after them early mornings or close To dark-
Concentrate around boat slips if you can, boat ramps also-
You can also perch jerk a bit to get some Quality bait, I've have done very well with perch heads before-
If it were me in your situation I would go get bait before you take her fishing, that way you wont be spending that quality time looking for bait =more actual fishing time=better chance at hooking up with a nice one-
You can get bait a day or two ahead of time if you keep it iced down, the fresher the better, but I know that is not always feasible -
Hope this helps a bit -

All I ever use is chicken breast and get size and numbers. Typically I'll leave the cast net at home when I have a bag of chicken breast. I'm sure cut bait works great too when you can find it.

You can find shad on rivers behind any dam or rapids. Use a cheap net and have a backup. You will likely lose it to structure. In the lakes, shad are in different places at different times of the year. The back of a sunny cove. Up in a muddy creek. Boat slips. Boat ramps. In the cold of winter you almost have to have a taped net and a boat.

We had those too, but stopped using them after hooking 2 turtles.

Okay, thanks!

I believe I can find some rapids from man-made structure or sunken timber.