![]() ![]() In the Mountain Fork River down in McCurtain County, and in a couple of small clear-water creeks in northeastern Oklahoma, I've caught channel cats while wading or float-tubing and drifting night crawlers or grasshoppers directly into logjams or brushpiles with the current. Catfish seem to stage along that edge, waiting for the current to push something edible past them, or for food to swirl out of the current into the calmer water at the edge of the island's "current shadow." When flows on the Arkansas River are medium to high, I've caught limits of blue cats by anchoring my boat immediately downstream from a mid-river island and placing my baited lines just at the edge of the calm water pocket below the island. River catfish do the same: They learn - places into which currents bring food, or in which they can hide from currents the consequences of river flows increasing or decreasing around bottom and shoreline structure and around islands, wing dams, logjams and other objects. I had both night crawlers and bait shrimp, and we caught a nice 5-pound bass on one of the night crawlers, but even though I scattered a couple of cans of food on the water, I elicited no reaction from the cats. We fished in the usual places, but couldn't seem to buy a bite from a catfish. A small intermittent stream that flowed into the pond was running muddily that morning. It had been raining throughout the night, and was still at it that morning. One day I took a couple of youngsters to the pond to fish. ![]() That drew the fish in from all over the acre-plus-sized pond. I'd always start by throwing out a coffee can's worth of pellet food in the area that I was going to place my baited lines in. Although I rarely kept more than a single fish to eat, it wasn't unusual to catch several 10-pounders in an hour or two of fishing. I used to have access to a catfish/bass pond that was loaded with channel cats in the 8- to 12-pound range. I want to talk mostly about stream-fishing here - but I'll tell one quick story about a pond just to illustrate how catfish can adapt to altered circumstances. In a short time, fish learn to respond to those signals even before the first pellet of food hits the water's surface they may start to thrash on the surface of the water as soon as the banging begins. And I've known people who beat on a metal pole in the water or on the planks of a wooden dock to signal that it's feeding time just before they'd toss out the food. Just prior to the devices' going off and scattering pellets of food over the water, fish will gather under the feeders in anticipation. They don't always behave the same way in every environment, and they learn to respond to change both rapid and gradual.Īsk anyone who has raised channel cats in a small pond and provisioned the fish either with timer-actuated automatic feeders or by hand. I believe that fish, like most creatures, are pretty adaptable. ![]() Black bass, striped bass, walleyes, catfish - it doesn't matter: Understanding how the fish relate to current can make your time on the water much more worthwhile. Current is the key to finding fish and catching them. Downstream from Kerr Dam are more navigation pools - long, narrow reservoirs with lots of moving water.Ĭatching catfish in streams can be quite different from fishing in reservoirs. Kerr reservoirs, it absorbs the Illinois and Canadian rivers. Dammed again to form Webbers Falls and Robert S. #Webber falls ok fly fishing free#Below Tulsa, the Arkansas flows free for many miles, augmented along the way by the inflow from dozens of creeks, before swelling in size just above Muskogee, where it's joined by two other major rivers, the Verdigris and Neosho (Grand). First, of course, is the Arkansas River, which, entering the state north of Ponca City, is dammed in two places to form Kaw and Keystone lakes and gathers the waters of the Salt Fork, Chikaskia and Cimarron rivers before it reaches Tulsa. ![]()
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