Recently took an interest in fishing for big blues so been studying up lately to try and learn something about it. Ran across two different styles of drifting. One was dragging the weights along the bottom with the drift, the other was to keep a vertical line straight down and suspend the weights off the bottom at various depths as you dfift. Would like to hear opinions from the forum?

there are many approaches to catching catfish. Drifting is using no-roll wts and covering alot of area in a lake by using the wind to your advantage. Get out as many lines as you can and bring the bait to the fish! Santee cooper rigs are the preferred method and works great in most lake around north texas. You can google that and find alot of information. I like to cover alot of area when driting.

I think you will find the first method more productive in the areas of texas.

Right now, you may catch more by anchoring over mid lake humps that are holding shad. Just fish vertically.

If your researching different drift techniques for Big Blues look up Dragging with a trolling motor and a Santee rig it takes the I.O.W.A out of drift fishing with the wind! By using the trolling motor with the aid of the GPS-Depth finder to cover more productive water such as along ditches or drops and ledges and being able to repeat when you find the fish quicker.

There are actual days when the wind doesn�t blow in Texas especially East Texas.

Does it matter what kind of weight you use when you drift like a no roll weight? I use the team catfish sinker slides with a clip weight and was wondering if that is not making my bait move around in a circle while drifting i get hits but not many fish, because I catch more fish when I anchor

you can use no rolls but ....i recomomend using 3/4 to 1.0 oz egg sinkers at least. The best drift weight IMO is a slinky or bottom bouncer style. Bassicaly a shoe string or para chord filled with 00buckshot. I put 10 to 13 pellets in mine. they crawl across the bottom and dont get hung up near as much and you can detect a subtle bite since the weights not bouncing the [censored] out of the rod.

Ok thanks

Welcome abord big daddy cat

In one video I saw they were using 3 ways with heavy weights (4-6 oz) and drifting with lines straight down over side of the boat set at various depths off the bottom. Guess it would work rigged santee also. They set one at 1 or 2 ft off the botttom, another at 3-4 ft off and so on. Benefit was they were covering more of the water column with their drift and with the tension on the loaded rods they could easily see the slightest movement when a fish got interested. Wondered if anyone here uses that technique? The real question is when we drag the bottom are we missing fish above our baits by drifting only at one depth?

I drift 2-3oz weights on a 3-way setup.....weight line maybe 24-36inches long with the hook leader being about a ft long

bluecats will suspend, especially in the summer when the thermocline is there ... in summer lotsa blues are caught on juglines in deeper with a hook placed about 10 ft down from the surface ... would make sense to fish the whole water column when drifting

good information from various above. my 2cts worth; best speed seems to be around 0.5 to 0.8mph. I have three drift socks that I can utilize depending on the wind velocity