Book Review: Catching Catfish (The Ultimate Guide - Blues - Flatheads - Channels)

[zippyFX]

This year I had the opportunity to go once a week on weekday evenings to fish so I tried targeting night time species. Over the course of evenings in the spring, summer and fall I managed to catch Smallmouth bass, Pike, Bullheads, Crappie, Rock Bass, and Channel cats. The two night time species I did not have luck with were Gar and Sturgeon. I'll have to try for them this year. This winter I may try to target Ling if I can get easy access to a hut in the evenings.

Anyways, by far the most interesting species was Channel Cats this year. This for a number of reasons; I had never caught any catfish so before so it was a bit of an adventure. Once I caught a couple I found I enjoyed the fight they out up, especially in small creeks. I also liked that catfish of good size were relatively plentiful from a wide range of locations in the Ottawa river. I find it rewarding to go out and be able to catch fish in the 2-6 pound range consistently. Because the fishing was relatively consistent I was able to try different approaches which was good for my inner fishing geek. I have managed to catch them on deadbait, live bait, worms, on a bobber, with stink bait, artificial bait and dough bait. I hope to catch them on some lures this spring in a small creek in town. I never did get my 10 pounder but I had fun trying.

Asking some questions on this board I got a lot of good advice from the likes of OT, Eli, and others which got me wanting to learn more. I scoured the internet and found this book at a reasonable price and decided to order it. It cost me $1 (+$6.50 shipping) for a used copy on amazon but I recently saw them in the Saskatoon Cabelas for $1.99 in the discount cave new.


The Freshwater Angler
Catching Catfish
The Ultimate Guide
- Blues - Flatheads - Channels
by Kieth Sutton

This books is well written and an easy read and provides many useful insights for newbies to catfishing like me. In my neck of the woods I did not need the specific sections on Blues and Flatheads but they were interesting to read.

The most interesting chapter was on Catfish Senses. Eli referred to Catfish as swimming tongues and he was not far off from what I have read. They have 5000 taste buds per square inch on their skin and more than that on there barbels... sheesh. Apparently they also use their swim bladders and otoliths to hear and have quite good hearing and can hear some thing like 13 times better than other fish for low frequency sounds. They can reportedly hear people walking towards them at catfish farms. This got me to thinking that I should be able to get one on a rattling type lure in the spring.

They provide a good breakdown of the common catfish and bulllheads commonly found in North America. They then go on to describe how to find catfish in the structure of common areas like small rivers, large rivers, lakes, and ponds. This was of limited use to me because I just went out and found what worked in my local area based on trial and error. It maybe of more valuable if catfish in your area are more limited, timid or pressured.

The book provides a breakdown and description of some of the typical fishing equipment you can use and the techniques you can use to fish for them (Still and drift fishing are the ones I think apply) some of which are illegal in Ontario (trot lining, limb fishing, jug lining).

The author goes on to discuss special techniques for areas like deep water or cold water; and they also provide a couple of recipes.

A good read and well worth the price I paid for it. I am not sure it would have been worth $19 Canadian sticker price though.

As an aside, I found this site online which seems to be a cut above the others run by Chad Ferguson:

http://www.learntocatchcatfish.com/