In Pursuit of a Big Cat

The first thing you need to catch a big flathead catfish is a nice farm pond full of “perch”. Well, actually, they aren’t perch. They are sunfish, of one kind or another.  “Perch” is a term the old timers in the pool hall gave to all types of panfish in the Ozarks, and it has been difficult to for me to stop calling them that.

Actually, a perch is a northern fish which fishermen in Canada see as a nuisance fish, because they never get very large. The walleye is also a perch, a member of the perch family, but the little yellow perch, which outnumbers most fish in some northern waters, is usually stunted and full of ‘yellow grub’ parasites. When you do indeed find yellow perch that are 12 or 15 inches long, they are as good to eat as the walleye.

You can say that about our sunfish… when you get good big ones, they are very good to eat. In Ozark streams, green sunfish can get very hefty, and so can bluegills in our farm ponds and large Ozark reservoirs.

But most of the time, in a farm pond, you will catch those species just too small to eat. So you convert them to catfish by using them as bait. A third species of sunfish, the spectacularly-colored long-ear sunfish, also known as a ‘punkinseed’ to many, seldom reaches an edible size, but they are great catfish bait. And sometimes in farm ponds around the Ozarks you will find hybridized sunfish, half of one species and half of another. It doesn’t matter, a flathead catfish wants live bait, and any of those little sunfish will do.

So to catch a big flathead, you first have to find a place where you can catch a hundred or so live sunfish and then you head to the river or lake, where you set a trotline in water where the flathead, also known as yellow catfish, would be found.  They like a little deeper water this time of year, around big bluffs, where there are huge underwater boulders or submerged logs of substantial size.  You learn in time, what to look for. Flatheads come in all sizes of course, but if you set a trotline, you are hoping for something between 20 and 50 pounds, and aware that on occasion Ozark fishermen catch them up to 70 or 80 pounds. That’s a tremendous fish.

In lakes throughout the Ozarks, there are also channel catfish, which can reach sizes up to 20 or 25 pounds, but normally are less than 10. The blue catfish is more similar to a channel cat than a flathead, but different in many ways, the main ways being the size to which he can grow. Blue catfish too, can be taken up to 70 or 80 pounds.

It is a good time to go after them, as the water cools and they feel the urge to fatten up for the winter. Both blues and channel cat will take the live sunfish, but they are also taken on nightcrawlers, dead shad, chicken livers, and prepared “stinkbaits”. But, for any of the three species in the early fall or late summer, I prefer the sunfish. And besides, if you have youngsters or grandchildren, they’ll love helping to catch the bait. There’s nothing wrong with going to a farm pond or creek and doing some “perch-jerking” as it is so often called by old-time Ozarkians like me.

If you are a catfisherman, and would like to help a good cause, I have volunteered to help feed catfish to a gathering of senior citizens and veterans at Cabool, Mo on September 18. I may need some help, so you can call me if you would like to donate some fish. But if I don’t get any help at all, I still figure I can do it, after all, I have been after catfish a whole lifetime, guided as a youth by my grandfather and those old timers in the pool hall who reckoned that trotlining was a lot of work, but worth doing.

Ol’ Jim once told me that a little hard work never hurt anyone unless they had a stroke or a heart attack, or fell out of the boat and drowned. And therefore he avoided it. He said that at the age of twenty-five a man ought to be setting trotlines for big catfish, but at the age of sixty-five he needed to think more about cane-poles and crappie… and shade.  Jim was quite a philosopher. It was Ol’ Jim who told me… “if you don’t have somethin’ good to say about somebody, be danged sure it never gets back to ‘em.”

But back to the idea of catching catfish. It only takes one 30 or 40 pound flathead to feed a lot of people, and that’s what I am going after this week. I set trotlines for flathead with rock weights about the size of a man’s fist, one every five hooks along that line. You need big hooks for flatheads or blues, size 4-0. While the 6-0 is plenty big enough for the channel cat, why use them when you might hook a huge blue or flathead. Stay with the bigger hooks and you won’t be sorry. Be sure the hook-lines, off the main lines are between 18 and 24 inches in length, and don’t use snaps. Loop them on, and be sure there are knots in the main line so hooks and stagions won’t slide.

But that weighted line is dangerous. Should you become entangled in it, or hooked, it can pull you under, even if you have a life jacket on. Grandpa and dad taught me when I was very young that it was wise to wear a sharp knife in a sheath for that very possibility. You need to be able to cut yourself free in a hurry. Two sheathed knives on your belt won’t hurt.

Remember if you set trotlines you are only allowed 33 hooks and they must be spaced three feet apart to be legal. If you have a rod and reel in your boat you are using to fish for catfish, you are only allowed 32 hooks on that line. And remember that on one end, you must have a tag of some kind, (I use a flat piece of wood) with a name and address on it, and your fishing license number if you have one.

I’ll let you know if we catch a big one. In the meantime, if you have catfish to donate to that fish fry, call my secretary, Ms. Wiggins, at 417 777 5227, or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. The e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net.

I hope to have all the information about our Outdoorsman’s swap meet on my website this week sometime, including a map. It will be held on Saturday October 9 at the Brighton Assembly of God gymnasium just off Highway 13… 17 miles north of Springfield.  We hope to fill fifty tables, so if you want to reserve one to use to sell outdoor items of one sort or another, let me know. Or you can bring a boat or canoe, and set it up outside. Last year this event drew over 1,000 people. It will be great fun again this year, and the church will serve a big dinner after noon.

See all the details on www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com, or call for more information. Tell Ms. Wiggins you want to speak to me.