Heys guys, I had big plans for catching all kinds of big blues this winter. But I have not caught one yet. I have never done winter catfishing before. And I have had good information on places to looks and everything. But I cant get them to bite for me. I can catch all the big striper and crappie I want, but the blues are kicking my butt. I know several people that are catching 4 to 5 fish over 30 and 40 lbs the day before I go fishing plus a whole box of eaters. I must be doing everything wrong.

Fished 50-55 foot of water.
Dragged baits at 0.1-0.4 mph (it was windy)
Did not have planer boards. Ordering some today.
Fished oklahoma side so I used cut sandbass For bait.
What rigs do I need to be doing? Or Am I just cursed on catfish?

I've been trying to target big blue cats. I can find them, no problem. But, can't them to bite. I can catch 2 to 10 pounders all day long though. I'm using a Santee Cooper rig, with an inline rattle, and a rattling float. As well as a suspended slip sinker rig, with an inline rattle. Drifting or trolling at .3 to .4. Cut Bluegill, Cut Shad, Strawberry Jello Chicken Breast, and Frozen Skipjack. Just about any type of bait seems to work for me.

But, can't seem to get the big ones to cooperate. Even tried whole live bluegill, and whole live shad.

On Texoma, find an area the sandbass or striper have been working and drift through em. Toads aren’t with every group but eventually you’ll get into em. Trophy blues can be very difficult to locate. I often spend several hours scanning to locate them before I ever get a line wet.

Thank you. Yeah it appears I need to put more time in searching, but it gets to a point where I feel like I'm just wasting time and not fishing lol. Unfortunately I feel like I have been "floating around like an idiot".
This time of year what do yall look for on the graph? Piles of fish? A couple fish? Just bait? Everytime I try to catch big big blues they whoop me and it feel like I have never been fishing before. Thanks for the tips and advice.

Mainly I use my side imaging, looking for the fish casting some big shadows near the bottom. There's usually smaller ones suspended around them with their shadows being further back, because they're above them. But, the big shadows is what I'm looking for. My go to big cat lake is Lake Worth. Nearly all fish are released back, because of years of consumption bans. Plus, the deepest parts are only like 25 feet, so it's very easy to pick them up on the side imaging. A lot of hogs in there.

I look for areas of the the lake that the gizzard Shad are concentrating. When you find the gizzards they will be grouped up for hundreds of yards and even up to half a mile or more sometimes. Once I locate these areas I slow down and scan at 3 mph to get a good mark on large soft bodied catfish. These big piles of bait will mostly be laying on the bottom but as you scan through em you’ll see bait balls getting pushed up off the bottom with fish around them every so often. These are active fish and I start looking for large mark around them. If they are trophy fish around over 30 lbs there won’t be more than 1-3 of em together. 20 lbrs can run in slightly larger groups of 3-10 fish. Big catfish do not usually run in large groups. When you find them they will often be following hybrids, sandies, or Stripers. I don’t specifically look for the shadowing like Z because a big cat laying on or close to the bottom will often not cast a shadow at all. If they are up off the bottom they will cast a shadow but most of the time they are close to the bottom and don’t give off much of a shadow. Instead I’m looking for large returns on side image that are softer in appearance than a scaled fish they are running with. They give a similar looking return as a gar but with a fatter head and softer return. You’ll also notice that when you find these groups of fish chasing bait that almost all of the fish will be facing the exact same direction and seem to move in unison. These are scaled fish that move in unison. The blues will following close and will also be moving in the same direction but won’t all be pointed exactly the same like scaled fish. Blues move more like a pack of wild pigs grazing. All moving in the same general direction but slightly oriented differently...I’ve been running side scan every week for the last 10 yrs and it took a good amount of that time before I fully understood exactly what I was looking at.

Great info guys. This is why I joined. Any tips on finding large gizzards this time of year? I have onky been finding the 3-4 inchers work fine for striper but I prefer bigger. Like I said this is the first winter I have kinda abandoned the hunting and stuck with fishing. So im learning alot. Thank you

I fish Lavon but I learned a lot of what I know from Cody Mullinex a former world record holder that guides for striper and Blue Cat on Texoma. When I would fish in the winter with Cody, we would always go shallow, up the west end of the lake. When I say shallow I mean SHALLOW. 2 to 4 feet of water. Biggest fish we caught up there was 52. I was out yesterday on Lavon for a quick morning trip and my grandson and I caught a 13 and a 26 in 4 feet of water.