The Ohio River system is the most likely place for Kentucky anglers to tangle with a big catfish, though good-sized specimens can be taken from any of our state's rivers. Photo by Ron Sinfelt

As a teenager, I used to spend as much time as I could exploring new territory. We'd fish where we could, spend countless hours waiting on groundhogs to come out of holes and walk miles over farms of my relatives just to find what we could find.

I was lucky that my uncles owned farms, and my grandmother, especially, had a place that stretched down a long bottom right to the banks of the Kentucky River. My father had introduced me to catfishing in farm ponds, and naturally, that led me to give it a try from under the canopy of the tree-lined shore along the river on the Henry and Owen county line.

Come to find out later, at least for catfish on this waterway, my scrounging around and using what red worms and green worms I found along the bank, is exactly what is most recommended for catching channel catfish on the Kentucky River even today. Imagine that.

Fishery biologists with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) say that catfishing for channels, flatheads and blues in many of our state's major river systems is expected to be very good this summer. The Kentucky River is one such example, but other big waterways like the Green River, Licking, Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee systems also offer some very high-quality whiskerfish catching opportunities as well.

KENTUCKY RIVER
As alluded to earlier, going for channel catfish in the Kentucky River is a good bet during the summer. Anglers who use natural baits below dams or around larger rock outcroppings are almost certain to hook a catfish or two (and more likely many more than two). Most anglers know that catfish are primarily bottom feeders, but on overcast days or at night, they will roam closer to the surface and along features of the bank looking for a meal.

Areas along the Kentucky River where steeper bluffs, banks and chunk rock habitat adorn the shoreline are top spots to find channel cats. Mouths of creeks also provide catfish a corridor to intercept food that is washing into the main river system. These areas often offer a little deeper water that catfish prefer almost anytime of year.

If you use a depthfinder to locate the deeper holes in the Kentucky River, usually that's going to be where catfish can be found right now. The Kentucky River is not necessarily known for trophy catfish, but more for producing plenty of eating- sized fish. Pools with sunken debris, logs on the bottom or spots where silt and mud doesn't cover everything are places to fish first. Catfish like to settle into a rocky area and ambush smaller fish, snag a crawfish or suck up other organisms that drift or wiggle their way downstream and close to the bottom.

Channel catfish will congregate below dams for two big reasons. One, there are usually a lot of rocks below a dam, and the flow over a dam seems to attract lots of other fish, big and small. After a rain, when surface water rushes into a river system, feeding activity often picks up below dams as new food sources are moved downstream.

Anglers should be aware that there's a learning curve when fishing below dams. It takes a little while to figure out how to work baits in tailwaters without hanging up on every cast. It takes experimentation with weights and drifts to get your lure down enough and into the spots where the catfish are waiting. The contour and composition of the bottom below every dam is different. However, once you spend some time doing it, the "feel" of working along the bottom will be more familiar. You'll soon spend more time catching fish than re-tying hooks and clamping on new sinkers. It just takes practice.