I’m new to catfishing. Would someone please post a few graph pics of what the returns look like to ID catfish? I know what white bass and striper look like but haven’t ever had someone show me what catfish look like.

Thanks for the help.

One of these is a 25 lb blue cat.

I know because I logged this on the graph about 3 seconds before I hooked it.

Hint...it's on the bottom and to the right...

What graph are you using?

I have a Lowrance HDS9 Gen 3 with down/side scan. I can find whites and hybrids/striper on the graph, just haven’t had anyone show me what catfish look like. Sonar and downscan would be great if you have some views to share.

Dan, that’s a big fish on the graph! Do you have the sonar view as well?

No saved images, but I know a large catfish will usually show a red return on my Helix on down scan. I've been told that is their head since it it the hardest part of their body.

Here you go

TFF Link

Catfish on a graph.



Let me know if I can do anything more for you.

That sure was a big help there Flags.

It's called humor. Lighten up Francis.

Too must time wasted on Powerpoint presentation development lately, Flags?

I do not. But it was a big red line. Horizontal. No hook.

If it was a hook that would have told me the fish was most likely moving through the sonar beam. This fish was relatively stationary and sitting directly below my kayak. Just a shade to the port side so the DSI caught this really clear picture of it.

To be fair I was logging sonar and this is an enhanced image from a laptop. the processor on my unit would not have shown it to me that clearly at the time. But when you upload the data onto a laptop you can get a lot better quality images with all that additional computing power. **Don't ask me all the specifics about that my buddy CCTX does that. I share the file with him on Google and he's able to pull some really clean data out of it.

I knew real time there was several Big Fish hanging out around that tree but I thought they were stripers. That's actually turned into a pretty good blue cat spot for big fish. They like that tree. It's just off a hump and near a drop off. I've marked a lot of smaller fish in that area that I think are crappie. I think those blue cat hang out there and eat those crappie.

Google slides actually. I was doing an online assignment for my class and just couldn't resist. Even the teacher can't be serious all the time.