Keeping Pace During Early Season

When water temperatures rose above 50F in mid-March, flatheads began to move from overwintering areas and migrated toward river reaches used during the Prespawn and Spawn periods (mid-April to mid-July). The average distances during springtime were 39 miles in the Grand River and 14 miles in the Cuivre River, and the general trend was upstream movement.

Dr. Trent Sutton and Dan Daugherty tracked flatheads on the St. Joseph River in Michigan and found similar results; flatheads remained inactive in winter habitats, and when water temperatures reached 50F in early spring, all fish began returning to their summer locations. In the St. Joseph River, the spring migration period was shortlived, occurring over a two-week period, while in Vokoun’s study, the migration took longer for some individuals because spawning sites were farther from wintering areas. In both studies, many flatheads exhibited site fidelity, returning to the same general areas in which they were caught and tagged the previous year.

Vokoun says that cold fronts stalled the spring migration. “Migrating flatheads moving up into a tributary typically started to stage in April, working up the lower ends of tribs. Then when a cold front hit, they’d turn around and zip back downstream. Often they didn’t go all the way back to their original wintering hole, but found another hole they used temporarily. Once spring broke, they eventually went on with their migrations, and fishing started to pick up with the spring floods.”

Finding and catching flatheads during the spring transition can be hit or miss, but research offers some clues as to where they might be found during this phase. Vokoun says that migrating flatheads held at resting spots along their route. But the habitats they chose usually weren’t the heavy-cover types of spots they typically use later in the Prespawn and Spawn periods. “The sites where I located them were more characteristic of hydraulic breaks than heavy cover,” Vokoun says. “These spots were around topographic features that provided areas out of the main current. I often found them around clay points, which are a common feature in the rivers I studied. But overall, they weren’t as selective as they were in the Prespawn and Spawn periods about they types of features they sought.”

Stange: “In spring, there’s this whole grand transition with flatheads, moving from wintering areas, becoming more active, and bouncing from place to place. There’s potential for catching fish. In rivers that have fewer structural features, like points that act as current breaks, snags and instream holes are probably good spots to contact resting flatheads. Wing dams are probably used as resting spots for flatheads moving a long way in bigger channelized rivers, as are submerged logpiles.

“Earlier I mentioned that cutbait might be a good option early in the season. I haven’t experimented enough with cutbait in spring to say it works better—it might be a bigger part of the whole early-season story than we realize. I’ve seen anglers fishing down on the Red River in Texas, catching flatheads in colder water in March. They fished a deeper creek with reduced current off the main river. The fish either were in the creek since winter or moved up the creek from the river. They targeted big shallow snags and fished with cutbait.

“In February, or maybe it was March—I can’t recall, but the water was cold—I fished with catfish guide Jim Moyer on the Cumberland River in Tennessee. We caught flatheads on cutbait, those fish coming from a mid-depth area where the deeper channel transitioned onto an upstream flat. Flatheads might have been moving up through that funnel area and feeding on the flat.”