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Tawakoni special catfish bank fishing gears:

Rod - 9 to 12 foot medium heavy graphite surf rods
Reel - 5000-8000 series spinning reels
Rigs - 3-way sinker at the bottom is all I use for catfish
Hooks - Gamakatsu octopus hooks 2/0 4/0 7/0 for blue catfish; #2 kahle hooks for channel catfish

300 miles away?? man, you are one dedicated catfisher man. i might as well drive to gulf for that distance. what city you live in?

Good information, right there.
Thank you for shareing. BankAngler 50.

We live in West Tx.. Its a drive for us. We do it 3 times a 'year. .
Worth the drive. Too fill the freezer. Great Lake. Outstanding Regular Folks.
Never had a bad experience.
Those are some of the best eating fish there is.

You're welcome Bittercreek, I'm more than glad to share what I know in hope that those info will help some fellow anglers along the way.

hahaha, not quite that dedicated, I just moved to Austin area two months ago, haven't fish once yet, left alone driving all the way to |Twok.

just want to add a few words on fishing tandem 3-way rigs...fishing shallow water you want both of your baits to hover just off the bottom, you can accomplish that by laying your rod tip low by propping your rod at a low angle. Stay close to your poles and be ready to set the hook.

how is austin? i am beginning to dislike dfw more and more. traffic is getting worse everyday. i hate my job and stubborn boss. austin is considered to be tx silicon valley and it's more close to gulf. maybe a few years later, i'll move to austin.

Very dynamic but EXPENSIVE place to live. Gotta work like a dog to pay bills. Lol. DFW has its advantages, a good fisherman can supplement his income by catching and eating fresh and delicious fried fish fillet, etc. He could get by with 24k/year on family of four, and if you know how to make fancy fish dishes (hehm, YouTube dishes, if you must, lol), the kids wouldn't know that they were poor.

Traffic in and around Austin is much worse than DFW imo.
Stacks up on 35 every day all the way back up to Georgetown.
West and Northwest just as bad. Gets worse every year.

I-35 backs up north and south every day. You learn to get a map and figure a route from the toll road to wherever you want to go.

main local north-south routes are clogged up during rush hours, too. It took us over an hour to drive 10 miles on 734 (Palmer Ln), lol.

I'm wrapping up this thread with the nuts and bolts gears here. I'd like to add a few more words on the specifics then we're done. ..

9 to 12 foot surf graphite rods... Catfish may come really close to shore real early in the morning then they drop back deeper as the sun rises. The same is true late afternoon and into the night, especially in Spring and early summer. They might bite real shallow early in evening then drop a little deeper as night fall, etc. Having longer poles allow you to cast further out to reach the fish. Quite often we wade down in the water then cast out. I highly recommend waders if fish regularly. I like graphite rods because they're more sensitive and you can fill the fish better from 100 yards away, it's mainly just for fun at the beginning, but as you gain more experiences the sensitivity will quickly tell you if your drag is too tight or too loose (so you may adjust drag accordingly ) and the flexibility of graphite rod will compensate the tightness of your drag so fish don't break off too easily. I use Daiwa Sealine mh rods they're $70-90 range.

Reels... Spinning reels are best for bank catfishing. Bankers like to cast into the winds and baitcast reels tend to backlash in windy conditions, you don't want to deal with bird nests. I use the cheapest saltwater spinning reels that I can find that are watertight, because muddy water is bad for internal gears of your reel and will make your drag sticky and not smooth. Shimano Socorro reels are around $70, they are a bit slow to reel but drag is strong and pretty smooth for the price. 5000 series is minimum, and upto 8000 series maybe needed if you use heavier lines and/or if you fish a flat and wade down very far from shore to reach the nearest drop off where bigger fish tend to congregate.

Rigs - 3-way sinker at the bottom is all I use for catfish
Hooks - Gamakatsu octopus hooks 2/0 4/0 7/0 for blue catfish; #2 kahle hooks for channel catfish

I've covered 3-way rigs extensively, mainly on its long distance casting advantage over other kinds of rigs. I might add that it's very easy and quickly to re-bait 3-way rigs.

On hooks, those are just my preferences over the years, they seem to work best for me because gamagatsu hooks are very sharp and stay sharp, they also work great for whitebass and stripers also. I use these very same setups to catch stripers and hybrids at lake Tawakoni. They work and will help you catch fish. And with that you should be ready to catch some catfish of all sizes and some stripers and hybrids. Thank you for reading and sharing, and I apologize for taking so long to write this... Wishing every one full stringer of fish or loaded cooler on every fishing trip.