I cant remember--when do the cats get in 1 ft water. I dont think it it alltimers but my wife calls me Al----------thanks mike

The best example is in may or june when the wind blows into the shoreline around Midway landing on Richland Chambers lake. But anytime the wind is steadily blowing into shallow water on nearly any lake there will be cats there. In fact it depends on what you call shallow water as I catch most of my cats in less than 6 feet deep water.

We are catching them in 3ft right now in the weeds and rocks...

Rickt im talking when you can see there fins up in coves--mike

I've seen that after a rain when the grass gets flooded.

Caught a good mess of "blues" yesterday at RR in less that 10'!
Most were between 3-5lbs.
Good fishin'

fishinman, I fish RR also and been finding them in 15-20ft in trees. But just catching a few here and there. Are you finding them on humps, points..?

I have never fished lake grapevine or lewisville, wondering when the shallow bite begings there? i think the water needs to warm up just a little more

gfish--
Have been fishin' wind blown flats along some tree lines with fresh shad--Have been findin' the bait to find the fish--

shellj22,
I look for it to start now. I believe in the NTTC tourney in Jan the winning team was fishing shallow. My grandson caught a 20lber on the Vine yesterday in shallow. Less than 5ft.

the average water depth I fish year round is about 2 ft deep. Any time the water is 45 degrees or higher the fish will be up in the shallows chasing shad as I think the shad are easier for them to catch in shallow water. I see them all the time making big swirls up in sometimes less than a foot deep waters. They also do that same swirl thing when they hit my baits. it's like they attack when they detect a shad near them and they'll blow up out there and then you see the rod tip slam down. it's really cool to hook a nice size fish in 1 to 2 ft of water as they'll put on a show for ya. splashing around and slapping their tails on the water. this type of fishing is what made me come up with the bottom float rig where I've got a sinker on bottom and then a hook tied on the line via a dropper loop about 2 ft above the sinker and then a float above that to hold my bait off bottom out in that silt mud. fishing a carolina rig out there on that soft silt mud might catch you three fish a day as I pulled up within 100 yds of one feller out there on the mud flats on keystone and started catching fish like crazy and this guy would pull up his anchor and go over to the spot that I caught the previous couple of fish and then I'd catch a couple more in another area and he pulled up his anchor and moved over to that spot and then I casted out with one on each side of my boat and hooked two fish at the same time and he couldn't take it any longer .. he up anchored and came over and ran into my new boat to see what kind of magic bait I was using. The only difference in my bait and his bait is that I was keeping it off the soft silt mud so that the fish could get to the bait easily and he was using a carolina rig. I know i've veered off the subject but it's important to get your bait up off bottom out on those shallow flats as it's usually soft silt mud out there on most lakes that you're fishing on on the upper ends of the lakes. but, any time your water temp is 45 or higher and the wind is blowing towards the upper end of the lake the shad will move up into those shallows and the fish will be after them. The only time I fish deep waters is during winter after the water temp gets below 40 after a good cold front pushes all the baitfish and blues to deep water. on dec 20th last year and all the previous trips I took out I was fishing the shallows and the water temp was 42 degrees and the fish and shad were still shallow but we got a pretty nasty cold front to come through (record ice storms) and dec 29th all the fish left the upper end of keystone and I hadn't found the fish so we were about to head to deep water when the wind kicked up on us and I'd hurt my back so we had to end the fishing trip but the following trip on Jan 6th we caught our fish in 34 to 32 ft of water and limited out by 1pm or so and I fished deep water until feb 23rd as we'd gotten a little flood up river and that pulled all the fish out of deep water even though the water temp was 36 degrees the flood had washed a billion of some kind of nymphs and other things into the lake that the fish started feeding on this last couple of weeks as their guts were completely full of the larvae that I'm talking about ... they looked like mayfly larvae but that brought them back out of deep water and onto the shallow mud flats to about 4 to 6 ft deep where I've been fishing ever since the little flood we had ... well it rained several days in a week starting around feb 15 to about feb 20th and the lake came up about 2 ft and it flooded the little bird island on the upper end of keystone which had a bunch of those mayfly larvae on it or wherever they came from but there was millions of them that got washed into the lake and the lake's water temp was 36 degrees on the 23rd .. I figured that since it was that cold they had to be wintering down in deep water ... I scoured that whole lower end of the lake from 8 am to about 2pm and never found any catfish down there except for a few suspended fish holding on ledges which were hard to catch ... I then boated about half way up the lake and seen the fresh flood water and debris in the lake so then I knew what had happened ... we'd gotten enough water in the lake that the fish had pulled up into the shallows and up river so I went straight up to the northern end of the lake and located lots of fish .. we had a total of 2 fish in the boat by 2pm and we got up there and located some fish in 4 ft of water and hammered them pretty good for about an hour and had 12 fish total for the day or sommers there abouts and they missed about 10 others during that last hour or so. Since then the water has warmed up to 48 degrees and they'll stay up in the shallows barring that we don't get a lot of cold weather. but, every fish I've caught since feb 23rd has come from 2 to 5 ft of water and it's because of that fresh influx of food due to the fresh rain water bringing in lots of food for the fish. The shad haven't moved up there yet but they may not as we've gotten some good cold fronts to come through lately. A guy stopped me at walmart today and said "Tiny, where in the world did you find shad yesterday?" I said in the water ... we both laughed and he introduced himself and said that he'd seen me out there yesterday but never found a single shad and I said that the front had scattered them and they were out in the middle of the lake and he said well that's about the only place he didn't throw his net .. he said that he didn't have a good fish finder so he's just gotta throw until he gets lucky and catches some but he never got to fish just because of the fronts pushing those shad back towards deeper waters yesterday. so if the food runs out from the flood and we get cold weather which it looks like it might well the fish may move back to deep water but I doubt it as next week they're talkin bout 60 degree highs ... supposed to snow tomorrow pretty bad but we've got some rain right now and it's supposed to rain all the way through tomorrow and then change to snow and start to end by tuesday. but this fresh rain will put just that much more fresh food into the waters so that should hold them up in the shallows for another couple of weeks.

You the man tiny had an old man on lake waco tell me he NEVER fishes over 4ft keeps his areas chumed and loads um up if you dont catch something in 30min move

Ditto some of what was said above- we fish 1 1/2 - 4 ft ALL year. After a good front and dropping water temps we may move out deep but 2-3 days of a south wind and we're right back shallow. To me "deep" is anything over 4 feet. Between Dec and Feb we landed 5 fish 40 lbs + in the shallows, and too many over 20 to remember. Prefishing for Tawakoni about a month ago we posted up in 2 ft and in the first hour landed (2) 25s, a 34, a 49, and 6-7 eaters in the first HOUR. The next week our 5 fish stringer only went 57 lbs but we watched Ed and Joe about 75 yards away hit 206 lbs on their five. I believe what the question was in the original post was referring to the actual spawn, and on Lavon anyway this will be late March, early April.

fishinman-- Thats great to know. Thanx. I have been finding the channel cats up in pecan creek in the trees. but havent been able to find the blues. I think i will try shallower next time.

Thanks for all the great info !! Will put it to good use!!!