When I started out years ago, I started at the bottom. I didn’t have a nice boat, sponsors or expensive equipment. I was fishing off a 24-foot pontoon boat that I had rebuilt to my liking.
I had taken all the seats out of the boat to make room and had two cattle troughs plumbed up for bait tanks, Even today, it’s the most comfortable boat I ever fished from. It had all the walking-around room you could ask for. But it just had a very simple, inexpensive depthfinder.
You don’t need the newest and best sonar to be able to catch good catfish. In fact, if you can learn to catch fish without a depthfinder, you will be that much better with one when you do get the newest unit out there!
When I started out, I had the cheapest and simplest depthfinder that was sold at the time. Most of the time, you can look at the banks and, by knowing how deep the water is, you know whether or not that is a decent spot to fish.
I usually look for submerged trees that have toppled off the banks, with the top of the tree in the water and the root ball still out the water. In a situation like that, the water doesn’t have to be deep. Catfish, especially flatheads, will venture into shallower water in search of baitfish that tend to hang out around brush tops.
I talk to crappie anglers all the time who often hook good catfish while crappie fishing. Catfish know where their food is. When they get hungry, they know where to go! If you know where they are likely to be feeding, you can still catch them even without sonar.
