The best holes will drop sharply, at least 5 feet deeper than the surrounding substrate. Fish each hole from the upstream side. Allow the current to carry the smell and activity of your bait downstream towards the flatheads. Under these conditions, most of them will typically hit within a few minutes, or not at all. Savvy anglers rarely fish one spot for more than 20 to 30 minutes. After that, they move along to the next potential hotspot.

Never fish a hole that doesn’t have a decent population of baitfish in the vicinity. For whatever reason, flatheads won’t stay anywhere if the baitfish aren’t around, even when they’re not actively feeding.

This is stout-tackle fishing. Heavy-duty rods and reels, lines of at least 25-pound-test and big, strong 5/0 or better circle hooks are considered minimum tackle in this country.

Expect to catch flatheads above 30 pounds on a regular basis from the Green River. Some will be smaller than that, of course, but enough 30-pound-plus flatheads are caught to make it a common occurrence, not worthy of much discussion. And big ones -- at 50 pounds or better -- are fairly common. It’ll take one at least that big to get anyone’s attention or give you anything resembling bragging rights.

BARREN RIVER
The Barren River, not to be confused with Barren River Lake, doesn’t look like much of a catfish pick to the uninitiated. After all, this river is short, narrow and mostly flows through ordinary-looking farmland. Those facts notwithstanding, looks much different to catfish anglers in the know. To them, it looks like what it is -- one of the best-kept catfish rivers in Kentucky.

Upstream from the lake, this river is little more than a creek. But when it leaves the dam at the lower end of the lake, it forms what can arguably be termed a river. And it’s at that point that the best all-around catfishing can be found.

There are plenty of places to fish from the bank along the tailrace waters. And there are numerous channels, flatheads and yellow cats for the taking. Channel catfish are typically in the 2- to 5-pound range and, of course, the yellow cats are much smaller. Most of the flatheads will go less than 20 pounds. But big ones are possible, especially when the spillway is dumping huge quantities of water and the current is swift.

One of the best places along the tailrace is the sharp bend several hundred yards below the dam. Huge numbers of channel catfish are caught here every summer by anglers fishing chicken livers or night crawlers. These fish are most commonly caught by anglers drifting bait under a bobber or along the bottom with an old-fashioned river rig. (That’s a three-way swivel with a drop line extending to a sinker and the bait line running off another ring of the swivel.)

For the tailrace waters, other popular baits are creek minnows, creek chubs and small bluegills. The best ones -- no matter what the species -- are fresh and caught locally from the surrounding creeks. To be fair, some channel catfish specialists swear by shad entrails, but others favor the more traditional baits discussed above.