Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, and when catching channel catfish are the order of the day, well, that should be one of those times. Although it's true that many lakes offer fine catfishing, channel cats are river fish by nature, and many of the best opportunities to enjoy fine catfishing action occur in streams of various sizes.

Catfish are notorious low-light biters. Find the right location on a river or stream early and late in the day, and you can load the boat with chunky "eatin'-sized" cats like this in a hurry! Photo by Jeff Samsel

Despite stereotypes of being lazy sorts of fish, channel cats really do like the current. While catfish will congregate in the bottom of the biggest, slackest pool in a river, those fish generally are resting. Cats in the current are looking for dinner, which makes them far easier to catch.

Along with attracting actively feeding fish, moving water offers a couple of other important benefits. First, the current positions catfish. Where in a lake or in a slack river pool the fish could be almost anywhere, the current will control how the fish orient themselves, making it easier to know how to present baits to them. In addition, current carries bait scents downstream, and a catfish will follow its nose (and its whiskers) to the source and find your bait.

Of course, not just any current will do. Cats tend not to inhabit the swiftest, shallowest runs in a river, and they prefer current breaks to go with their current. They like to hold behind rocks, brush or other cover and wait for foodstuff to pass by. That food might be aquatic insects, mollusks, crawfish, finfish or just about anything dead. As scavengers, channel cats tend to feed opportunistically on whatever comes their way.

Because catfish do find food primarily with scent glands (which are not only in their nostrils and on their whiskers but all over their bodies as well!) the best baits for attracting them might be best described as stinky. Chicken livers, readily available from any grocery store, certainly rank near the top of the list. Other good picks for river cats include cut fish and commercially produced catfish baits such as Strike King Catfish Dynamite. Natural baits, such as crawfish and night crawlers, also work nicely.

Baits of all sorts need to be presented close to the bottom and either placed in or dragged through key zones. With that in mind, let's examine the types of spots that are most likely to hold catfish in the current, in each case considering the types of presentations that will most effectively put catfish bait into the strike zone.

RIVER BENDS
Major bends in streams of all sizes create the kinds of conditions that catfish really like, and the sharper the bend -- generally speaking -- the better the cat habitat. A typical hard bend in a creek or river features a deep scour hole somewhere along the outside bend and a shallow bar on the inside bend, providing cats easy access to a nice variety of depths. Meanwhile, a hard turn in the river creates complex currents, inevitably with eddies and often with back-currents. Plus, currents cut into banks, and trees commonly topple, adding cover to already attractive river-bend holes.