Otis “Toad” Smith with a fish from the Red River below the Lock Port Dam, just south of Selkirk, Manitoba.

In-Fisherman Editor In Chief Doug Stange’s lyrical use of story featuring the wily ways of Zacker and Otis (Toad) Smith spawned the modern age of catfishing that began to unfold a quarter of a century ago. Stange’s first forays into writing about catfishing were published in Fishing Facts magazine in the mid-1970s. Yet, it wasn’t until June 1984, June 1986, and February 1987 that his articles in In-Fisherman struck the right chords with the angling world, with reader response convincing the publisher that many anglers were interested in reading about the art and science of catfishing. In the eyes of countless observers, this was the time period that changed the way the angling world thought about and pursued catfish.

After that breakthrough, many other topnotch discoveries in the scientific and practical realms began to unfold, noted in In-Fisherman publications and television shows, as well as by a few others in the angling media.

Phil King of Corinth, Mississippi, who has become one of the giants in catfishing recalls that In-Fisherman’s Catfish In-Sider was brimming with the newest findings, which he devoured from cover to cover in one sitting and then tested and perfected them on the Tennessee River and its impoundments.

What’s more, King says that the quality of the information was so stellar that it provoked scores of knowledgeable catfish anglers to reveal their most cherished secrets and discoveries. From that point on newcomers didn’t have to labor through years of trial and error to become skillful anglers.

Other topnotch catmen observed that In-Fisherman’s multispecies approach introduced them to the tactics of walleye, bass and panfish anglers, and eventually some of those methods became part of the repertoire of many catfish anglers. In addition, some walleye, bass, and panfish anglers started to chase catfish.

Red River of the North

During their many journeys on the streams and rivers of the northern plains, Stange and Toad Smith unveiled the humongous channel catfish in the Red River of the North, bringing the bountiful fishery into the national spotlight. Stange still calls this the greatest channel catfish fishery on earth for numbers of giant fish. Nowhere else even comes close. He returned to fish the area two years ago, and on his first drop into an area he last fished 20 years ago, he caught a 20-pound fish. The fishery is actually better today.

Coldwater Catfish

Until Jim Moyer of Clarksville, Tennessee, disclosed that the dead of the winter was the best time of the year to catch giant blue catfish, most folks assumed that catfishing was a warm-water affair. After Moyer’s revelation about catching giant blues when the water temperature on the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers ranged from 35°F to 40°F, catfishing rapidly became a year-around endeavor.

The expanded season for catfish anglers was also exemplified by In-Fisherman Publisher Steve Hoffman, John Lehto of Somerset, Wisconsin, and others along the northern portions of the Mississippi River who vertically probed river holes in 15 to 25 feet of water in late fall with large soft-plastic swimbait bodies on heavy jigheads. The anglers discovered large concentrations of flatheads inhabiting wintering holes. These are vulnerable concentrations we now leave alone.

About the same time anglers were beginning to unravel the habits of wintertime blues and flatheads, the In-Fisherman staff also started ice fishing for channel catfish.

Drifting & Strolling

Traditionally, catfishing was a sedentary affair. But that began to change once Tom Lawrence of Papillon, Nebraska, and several other piscatorial pathfinders showed the still-fishing fraternity the virtues of drift-fishing for blue and channel catfish. To this day, drifting remains one of the most effective ways to tangle with big blues channels in a variety of waterways.

Strolling is similar to drifting, but the angler uses a trolling motor to move slowly over structure, keeping lines as vertical as possible. Strolling allowed Phil King and his partner, Stacey Thompson of Paris, Texas, to probe 80 to 90 feet of water and catch 233.75 pounds of blue catfish during the 2003 Cabela’s King Kat Classic tournament at Pickwick and Wilson lakes near Sheffield, Alabama. The combination of strolling and controlled drifting, was the only way that they could effectively present their baits in some of the deepest haunts of Wilson Lake.

Three years later, John Jamison of Spring Hill, Kansas, and Mark Thompson of Williamsburg, Kansas, competed at the Cabela’s King Kat Classic at Pickwick and Wilson. They strolled around a lair at Wilson that reached a depth of 114 feet, extracting 14 blue catfish that weighed 490.75 pounds. “Even at the turn of the 21st century, no catfish angler in his right mind would have pondered fishing depths of 100 feet or more,” Jamison says. Catfish anglers weren’t using the appropriate equipment to fish that deep, and not until catmen began using some of the boat control tactics employed by walleye anglers could they catch catfish in extremely deep hideaways.

Trolling

Anglers such as John Lehto, Mark Martin of Twin Lake, Michigan, and Virgil Tagtmeyer of Sedalia, Missouri, have caught numerable catfish while trolling crankbaits and assorted walleye rigs.

Initially, these catches were unintentional. Lehto caught big flatheads in the fall while trolling riprap areas for walleye on the Mississippi River. Martin caught blues, channels, and flatheads while trolling with various walleye rigs in bays, harbors, rivers, and other connected waters of the Great Lakes. Nowadays, Martin often pursues catfish, and while night-trolling he’s caught flatheads up to 40 pounds.

In 1974 Tagtmeyer began trolling crankbaits and catching blue and flathead catfish at the headwaters of the Lake of the Ozarks near Warsaw, Missouri, while he pursued temperate bass and walleye. But it wasn’t until 1987 that he developed a catfish trolling pattern that consistently caught catfish of grand proportions. In 1989, Tagtmeyer produced a videotape “Trolling with Tag,” revealing his trolling methods on Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Lake.

In May 2000, I joined Steve Hoffman at Lake of the Ozarks to test Tagtmeyer’s findings, and to our delight we caught 25- and 60-pound flatheads, far surpassing the other catfish that we caught using cut- and livebait. Despite the effectiveness of trolling, it is still too avant-garde for even the most ardent catmen to embrace. Nevertheless, it stands alongside drifting and strolling as a stellar discovery, which may eventually open other avenues for understanding the habits of catfish. For instance, In-Fisherman field editor Cory Schmidt envisions teaming with Martin and using an underwater video camera as a downrigger weight in front of a crankbait to record the reactions of catfish.