Hey everyone,

I haven�t tried catfishing in winter very much or consistently but never had great luck. How do you go about finding big blues in wintertime? I�ve read they often will be in the deepest parts of a lake where big shad schools are heavily congregated while one the other hand they may be so shallow there backs are out of the water. What are some of your best tips to locating and catching big blues throughout the winter season??

For me, the bigger Blues (20 to 40 pounders) hit on my deep water trotlines & deep water jugs the most. Yes, they will range from 5 to 18 pounders also. Smaller Blues seem to hit the jugs, deep or shallow & trotlines in shallow waters. I usually use fair size perch ranging from 3" to 5", as for me, on Lake Limestone. Limestone does not have slots imposed. I have not checked this years' new rules yet. There are plenty of big ones in Limestone. Some of those who have hopped on with me to go run one of my Planter Deep Water (DW) trotlines, have glanced at my scope & were amazed at all of the traffic down below.

Of course, I also bait out according to my Catfish Calendar & know how to work it.

Every fishery is a little different Clay. They go deep like that when we get a hard cold snap for an extended time. You can find them in all the usual places on any given day from 2 ft to 60ft and even deeper. Find where the bait is stacking and look for baitballs and bigger returns under them. When first starting out, Stay pretty close to the main channels or secondary creeks that intersect them when scanning and try and set up your drifts to hit different features and ambush points right next to channel like little humps, ledges, flats, and bends in the channel. On my lake we�re ususlly in 20-30+ ft in November and December. January were in 30-60 ft. I know there are a lot of guys that fish shallow in the winter but that�s not me. There are a million ways to skin a cat so get out there and scan scan scan. Do some long drifts over a variety of structure at a variety of depths with a variety of baits and you�ll start to figure some things out...

Good info! I am experimenting now and yet to catch any on rod the last few trips but have decent luck jugging the same areas. Lots of bait and game fish returns in the areas I�m fishing. I�m still learning how to find the active fish because apparently I find a lot of inactive fish here lately. I�m trying to pay more attention to bait being broken up around game fish to tell me they are feeding but still not having luck on rod and reel...I hope winter fishing comes together for me this year!

If you are catching on jugs but not rod n reel then jugs are Probally catching suspended fish. Drift some rods at various depths and match speed of jugs.

Thats what I mostly did with my rods which is why I was extra confused when the rods weren't catching any. But I'm wondering if the fish were not as active because the jugs had to drift a ways before even 1 of them would catch anything and I was in a target rich area.