One of my favorite rivers is the River Raisin. I will focus on the general areas I target. These locations can be translated to any river you fish, be it the Huron or a River as big as the Maumee and the St. Clair. The 1^st place I love to tangle with these fish is wood, Logs jams, and dead falls. Now these places need to be either on a bridge pilings, where there is a good size eddy, or after some fast water where the bottoms drops out of the river bottom and the river gets deeper. Channel cats like a lazy current to moderate current. Another place is just a deep slow hole in the river. The fish here in holes like this are a bit more spread out so you will want to fish a bottom rig and let it rest on the bottom. If you can find a deep hole that has a lot of wood in it you may have hit the mother load and found the home of the giants.

Also you can tell by where you can find them you basically need two different rigs. Which one you use depends on where you find them. The 1^st is a Large slip Float rig. My Float of choice is a large Thill Center Slide or Big game in 4 inch. Now when rigging a slip float many people set them up wrong. This goes for every Float you use as well. There is either a Black or white line or just a color change on the Float. That is where the water surface must hit the Float. On the above mentioned floats you should not see any wood grain it should be all under water. How you do this is a by a combination of your terminal tackle,weight and your bait. Good hooks for this type of fishing are 1 or 1/0 bait holders, 1 or 1/0 octopus, or a strong number 2 treble hook. My go to bait for this rig is Chicken Liver. Now you can catch them on other baits also like shrimp, night crawlers, crayfish ,and cut and live minnows. But the reason I use chicken liver is for two reason. One it is the cheapest bait you can get and two the catfish are pretty much the only thing you will ever have bite the liver. The other rig you need for summer catfishing and is my choice when I want to sit on a bank and relaxing,a slip rig.

A pretty important choice now is your rod, reel and line. A good general purpose set up is a 7ft long med heavy fast action spinning or baitcasting set up. Your line of choice will really depend on what reel you go with. The line you will need is 12lb to 20lb test line. If you go with a spinning reel you need to make sure that the line is limp enough so that it doesn’t jump off the reel on you. A good choice here is Trilene XL. I like to use Big Game when I am fishing with a baitcaster reel. Now the reel should have a good smooth and strong drag system. When you are fishing in log jams you have to be able to get the fish up and out of the wood quick.

Once you got your rods rigged up and you made the trip to your local grocery store you are all set to hit the water. The nice thing about Channel cats unlike its cousin the Flathead they’re caught at all times of the day and night. Channel cats will general take your offering pretty hard so it will not be to hard see a bite.

What you want to do is cast your bait just up-stream from where you think the fish are and let it drift down to them. When the bait gets to the end of the drift reel the rig in and repeat. You should be able to catch a fish if they are there with in couple of drifts. If you don’t get one just move on to the next spot. Make a note of where you catch each fish as you go. If there is something in common with each catch you have just found yourself a pattern and you can then start to cover more likely water and move a bit faster, the more water you cover the better chance you got to find one of this big boys that live in a river near you.

So get out there and cool off in a river and catch a great fighting and great taste fish this summer.