I' m little curious about the catfisherman that post here.
I have not read a whole lot about winter catfishing. I used to chase catfish year round. I have been hung up on crappie fishing for about the past 7 or 8years, so I dont catfish much anymore. I dont even chase those giant flatheads in spring anymore either, but I'm not completly done. When the month of December rolls around I put up the perch jerkin poles and break out the cast net and catfish poles.
I live in North Mississippi, so I fish these flood control lakes that we have here. In the winter the Corps draws the lakes down to winter pool wich reduces there size alot. My partner and I have 5 or 6 areas around my home lake where the old river channel swings in close to the bank with shallow flats about 3 or 4 foot deep on both sides. We will start the day getting fresh shad then drive around to these spots and check the wind. The wind is the main factor on where we decide to fish. It needs to be a stiff wind blowing into the bank at a angle, parallel is fine also as long as its blowing from deep water to shallow water. I guess what this does is blow the shad onto these shallow flats, and it also blows the scent of my bait down wind as well. You would think that the river channel would be the place to catch the fish, not so, not here anyway. Those big blues will be sitting on those shallow flats in that cold water gorging them selfs on shad, its wild I love it.
You know you are fixing to catch a load of fish when you cast your bait out and shad fly everywhere when your bait hits the water. I use four poles to get started, but more times than not I have to go to one because of the fast action. Its amazing that we can catch 10 to 25 pound fish one after another. We do release most of these.
The best thing is hardly no one else does this over here, not on my home lake anyway, I'm curious to know if anybody else does this in the winter.