Understanding The Seasonal Movements of Catfish

The 10 In-Fisherman Calendar Periods of fish response vary in length from year to year. Unusually warm or cool weather affects

The Prespawn Period offers potential for the year’s best fishing. Fish are moving—searching and actively feeding.

Spawn Period

Water Temperatures: 75°F or Higher

General Fish Mood: Positive-Negative

Catfish spawning may span a month or more, so the spawn doesn’t negatively affect angling as it would if all cats spawned at the same time. Also, channel cats bite almost anything near a spawning hole, so find a spawning area and you may find good fishing.

The spawn is triggered by the length of daylight (photoperiod), which cats sense in the brain, probably in the pineal gland. Linking spawning in part to length of daylight is one guarantee against eggs hatching too early or too late, which could happen if spawning time were based solely on water temperature. In addition, an internal biological clock causes eggs to mature even with external stimuli absent.

Catfish are motivated to spawn by water temperatures of 75°F or above. According to some studies, temperatures approaching 80°F are ideal. Catfish kept in water too cool for spawning will spawn when water temperatures quickly rise to 75°F, if time of year is appropriate. Spawning, then, is regulated by the interplay of an internal clock, length of daylight, and water temperature.

Spawning can take place as early as May in the South and as late as August in the North. In Missouri, dates range from late May to early July. The most common spawning month across the channel cat’s geographic range is June.

To begin the spawn, a male channel cat seeks a hole or pocket in a bank. Catfish in ponds with no suitable spawning locations don’t spawn. If artificial spawning structures are added, they may spawn.

The spawning hole should be secure, preferably with only one entrance big enough to admit the male and female. A small entrance not much larger than a fish’s body is ideal. Big fish spawn in big holes, small fish in small holes. If the hole’s entrance isn’t much bigger than the male, he lies with his head toward the entrance, nearly filling it, to effectively guard eggs and fry.

In small rivers, crevices near rocky riffles offer possible spots for spawning holes. Undercut banks, muskrat holes, and objects in the water—hollow logs, car bodies, tires, buckets—are possible spawning sites.

First, the male sweeps the hole to clean and enlarge it. Eventually he lures a female into the hole. The female ejects a gelatinous clump of from 2,000 to over 70,000 eggs, depending on the size of the fish, and the male fertilizes them. Then the female leaves or is driven from the hole by the male. She produces one clutch of eggs a year. Males, however, may spawn more than once if the spawning season is extended. The supply of available males often exceeds the number of sexually mature females.

The male is a good guardian. As mentioned, his massive head usually fills the entrance to the nest. He’s aggressive in defense of the eggs. Anything brought near him will be hit or bit. Holes with two or more entrances probably suffer egg loss because the male can’t guard them as well. The male also aerates and keeps silt off the eggs by fanning them with his fins.

Little is known about what happens next in the wild, because observations are based on catfish in clear hatchery ponds where they may behave differently. But we do know that eggs hatch in about a week. Then fry spend about a week in the nest being protected by the male before they enter the river to begin life among predators.

Some observers say the young slip into the river and are immediately on their own. Others, who observed cats in small ponds, report that males protect fry for several days after they leave the nest. Survival of the young is probably better in turbid water than in clear water, because reduced visibility in turbid water conceals the young from many predators.

Settling Period (Includes Postspawn and Presummer Periods)

Water Temperature Range: Upper 70°F to Mid 80°F

General Fish Mood: Neutral to Positive

This period, important in fishing for some fish, isn’t vital to catfishermen because the catfish spawning period is so extended. Even in ponds where water temperatures and length of daylight are identical for all fish, not all catfish spawn at the same time.

Catfish probably go through a type of recuperative period after spawning, but to an angler, it doesn’t matter if a few fish are recuperating because at any given time, some fish are feeding.

This period probably occurs in late June to July in much of the catfish range. Catfish are on the move again, often moving downstream from spawning sites, looking for deep cover-laden holes that offer security and food. Downstream movement isn’t automatic. If the spawning area offers good summer habitat, they may linger.

If water levels are high and rising, channel cats move either upstream or downstream during this settling period. More typically, though, water levels are dropping, so they move downstream, often leaving small tributaries to enter bigger rivers. These movements are more pronounced in small creeks than in big rivers.