by Brent Frazee
Experts share tips on how to catch trophy blues, flatheads, and channel cats from shore.
There was a time when Kevin McCoy dreamed of buying a boat to chase the big catfish of west-central Missouri. Then, he came to his senses. When you’re born a bank fisherman, old habits are hard to break.
“I grew up on the rocks and mud,” said McCoy, 28, who lives in Warsaw, Mo. “I’ve fished from the bank most of my life and I’ve caught some big cats that way.
“That’s the nice thing about catfishin’. The big ones are usually within casting distance of the bank.”
McCoy has proof. He has caught a 63-pound blue cat and a 56-pound flathead from the shore. And he has landed countless others in the 20- to 40-pound range.
He is so enthused about bank fishing that he formed a group called the Truman Rock Ratz. That group of landlubbers has regular bank-fishing tournaments from Truman Dam on Truman Reservoir to Bagnell Dam on Lake of the Ozarks. That encompasses a lot of good catfish water – murky water teeming with big blues, flatheads and channels.
“The point we try to make is that you don’t need a $30,000 boat and an expensive fish finder to catch big catfish,” McCoy said. “We’ll catch some big ones right from the bank.”
Many other cat men feel the same way. There’s no denying that a boat provides mobility, allowing fishermen to move quickly from one spot to another. But if a bank fisherman makes the right choices on where to set up, he or she can be just as successful as their boating counterparts.
From McCoy’s home waters of the Missouri Ozarks to the lakes and rivers of Kansas to the numerous lakes of northeastern Texas, cat men and women are proving that they don’t have to leave the bank to catch the big ones.
The Missouri Way
McCoy has plenty of options when he fishes from the bank in west-central Missouri. The tailwaters of Truman Dam feature good current, rocky habitat and food-rich water to attract big blues. True, it can be an obstacle course, scrambling over the riprap, to get to the water’s edge. But plenty of big fish make it worth the risk, McCoy will tell you.
He keys on days when there is water being released from Truman Lake, creating a good flow and activating the baitfish.
“The big catfish have a buffet available,” McCoy said. “Shad, quillback, common carp, silver carp, gar, small buffalo, (panfish) – they all make good bait.”
McCoy usually cuts his bait into chunks, then fishes with 13-foot rods and heavy-duty reels spooled with 80-pound test braided line with a leader of 20-pound-test monofilament. He uses sinkers as heavy as 8 ounces in the swift current.
But the Truman tailwaters aren’t the only place he’ll fish. He also fishes along rocky banks and snags on the Osage River for big flatheads, and pools below riffles and eddy holes for big blues.
“The conditions will tell you where you need to be,” he said. “In the summer, I’ll do a lot of night fishing.
“But we’ll catch them during the day, too, if there is good current.”
The Kansas Way
Renne Shumway, better known as Catdaddy to many Kansas fishermen, will tell you that he spent much of his childhood sitting on a five-gallon bucket at the edge of the Kansas River with a fishing rod in his hands.
“If they couldn’t find me in school, they know where I’d be,” Shumway joked. “I would slide down this real steep bank on a rope ladder and I’d fish this hole that was filled with twisted steel from an old bridge.
“The big flatheads loved that hole. I remember the day I caught a 40-pound flathead and he just fought like the dickens. That’s when I got hooked.”
Shumway still hasn’t come unhooked. Today, he guides for a living, running his Catdaddy’s Catfishin’ Adventures guide service.
On many days, he will take customers out in his boat. But he still looks forward to the days when the weather gets bad and he is confined to the bank.
He targets big flatheads in places where there is plenty of cover.
“A big ol’ heavy snag, that’s a flathead hacienda,” Shumway said. “It might be some concrete in the water, a big log jam, sometimes even old cars. Those are the spots flatheads love.”
Shumway will drift natural bait—everything from bullheads to small carp to green sunfish – to one of those current breaks, using a balloon as his bobber.
He uses 7-foot rods, 40-to 50-pound-test copolymer line, a small weight and medium-size hooks to make his presentation as natural as possible.
Shumway has caught flatheads weighing more than 50 pounds that way.
When he targets big blues, he fishes fast water, especially whitewater with big boulders. He often fishes from wing dikes, fishing the eddy holes below those structures.
“We call it bobbin’,” Shumway said. “We’ll set up one rod with a big bobber and toss it out, then cast out another one behind it a ways. Those bobbers will just follow each other in that back eddy. That’s a good way to catch big blues.”
The Texas Way
There’s nothing like a howling wind to put Danny King in a good mood.
“When the wind’s blowing 25 miles per hour and up, I make sure I’m out there fishing from the bank,” said King, 70, who lives in Electra, Texas. “I’ll set up where the wind’s blowing in my face, and the waves are just crashing in.
“Those are the days when the channel cats are in the shallows, feeding like crazy.”
King knows from experience. He set seven lake records for channel catfish on small reservoirs in northeastern Texas and southwestern Oklahoma, all last winter.
He didn’t have to search hard to find bait. King formulated the nationally known Danny King’s Catfish Punch Bait. He sold his company, but he later came up with Suki Gizzard Catfish Bait, a stinky concoction that draws catfish like flies.
“While everyone else is running around trying to catch shad (for bait), I am fishing,” King said. “My bait is about all I will use.”
That bait has carried King far. He has won or placed in many catfish tournaments, has been featured in videos and magazine articles, and is popular on the seminar circuit. Simply put, he is a name in the catfishing world.
But King hasn’t forgotten his roots. He was brought up fishing from the bank. He tagged along with his father and grandfather and they would cut down a branch of a salt cedar tree, tie a line and a hook to it, and King had a fishing pole.
The bait? King’s grandfather made a gooey mixture made out of cottonseed meal, flour, vanilla extract, anise and a few other ingredients, and the catfish and carp loved it.
Later, while working in a bait shop, King began experimenting with his own catfish baits and came up with some winners. He still uses his punch baits when he fishes from the bank.
“Bank fishing down here is best from October through the end of May,” King said. “That’s when the big fish go shallow.”
Even when it gets hot, King will chum several holes along the bank with range cubes or soured wheat during the day, then come back at night and fish those areas.
