When is the catfish spawn?

What water temperature in cold lakes?

What water temp in the power plant lakes?

Seems to begin best when water temp is around 70 degrees and up into the mid-upper 70's so they typically spawn in late spring in North TX. You can usually get them pretty good starting in late April thru June on rip rap and windblow points.

they spawn in June .. this year they spawned a little later in keystone ... I guess it was due to the flood water .. they came off the nests about mid july this year or there abouts.

Depends if you're talkin channels or blues. We fished a Lewisville tourney last April and the blues were on their beds and rolling up in the shallows then.

unclepugly ... blues don't nest out in the open like bass do ... those fish you seen swirling out in the shallows were hunting shad and when they attack they make a huge swirl like a bass might that's defending their nests. but blues and channels are almost identical on the time of year the spawn.

they usually spawn after a little catnip right?

I never thought of THAT! I have a bag in the freezer - I'll toss it all over G-Vine

I always thought when they felt a little randy it was time to spawn.

Good to know...I always thought the blues spawned in April or so. I've seen em several times up in 1-1.5 ft ganged up so thick you could walk across em and a few times they wouldn't take a shad if you hit em with it...figured they were up there spawning but I defer to your knowledge. By the way, we met at the NTTC classic last year. Matter of fact we were fishin pretty close to ya all day in the red/whit chapparel but you were way up in those pads. Hope to see ya in Oct on Lewisville.

I'll be guiding most likely as I've got most of sept, oct, and nov booked up or a lot of those months are already taken up. all the weekends are taken so I doubt I'll be able to attend many tournaments but maybe the deep winter ones I may be able to go.

when you see those fish up in the shallows like that don't throw a carolina rig at them because you're most surely in silted in mud flats if they're like the ones we fished at ray hubbard ... that soft silt mud will engulf your baits immediatly so you want to suspend your baits off bottom and when you see them up there like that in april they're feeding heavily and won't turn down a fresh piece of cut shad ... those are the special days out catfishing when you witness feeding like that because it's one after another and usually can't fish more than two poles at a time so if you're fishing carolina rigs put a float on the leader and use a leader about 3 ft long and put the float about 1 ft from the hook ... one of those little bitty floats is all it takes to float a hook up off bottom and your bait will be hanging about 8" or so below the surface ... those fish will nail it almost immediately if you're using fresh cut shad cut from live shad or cut bluegill. April is staging time and they feed heavily during April to get ready for the spawn as they don't feed during the spawn too well or any at all ...the mature bluecat won't feed at all ... you'll still catch the smaller fish after probably may 15th or so down there but that's usually about all you'll be able to find after the run. but before that they're bulking up.

catfish require a hole or really tight cover to nest because they won't nest unless they have a defendable nest and usually the most aggressive and athletic male bluecat will take up the prime nesing areas ... driving out any that may not be up to snuff ... size probably also makes a big difference in the capability to acquire the best nest holes and tight cover. I think since nesting areas up the small rivers ya'll have that feed those lakes I'd bet that they're nesting quite a bit under the cattaile roots as those make cave like structures under them. old beaver holes will also hold a big ole male bluecat or flathead. muskrat holes also get them good and started on building a nest as the fish will also wallow out holes that are started in the banks for them and under big rocks or boat ramps. but never out in the open I don't think and nesting occures right in mid june up here as that's when we found most of the male channelcat on the nests and I'm pretty certain bluecat and channels nest right at the same time overlapping flathead spawning times which is on up into July. flathead, bluecat and channelcat all nest in holes or tight cover.

-Never-LOL. June, late May.

I'm almost always using a Santee Cooer rig w/ a 3" cigar float so I don't think the bait is sinking. The one time that really sticks out to me was on Lavon a few years back. Heard what sounded like a waterfall and when we got thru the trees the water was boiling and it was only maybe 1 ft deep. All you could see was cats swirling everywhere ranging from 1 lb to maybe 20 in an area that was approximately 20 yards squared. We ground the boat in the mud, tossed shad heads,cut chunks, filets, hookers...no luck. This went on for a while and when we backed off maybe 100 yards we started catchin fish. Figured the ones rolling were spawning but it was April and whatever they were hittin they didn't want the shad we had just caught maybe 2 hrs before.

must have been a big prime male up in there in a hole that was giving off feramoneys and interviewing females for the job of depositing eggs upon his newly wallowed out nest. I think if it was me I'd have just snagged one of them to see what was in their belly via a burp stick and threw it back in once I figured it out.

Whats a burp stick?

Usually a piece of pvc...