Rookie

Fished Cats seriously for the first time on the St. Croix friday night with a buddy. Got two channels, one about 3lbs. and one that probably went about 5. Had one rod with a cut up sucker, and one with a 8″ live sucker(biggest they had). Fished the big hole in the no wake zone just south of the high bridge. No luck with the flatheads(really want to catch one!). Just wondering what has worked, and kind of where to go on the Croix to catch flatheads. Strictly catch and release, looking for some help!

Thanks

Ben

were you a bit down stream of beanies? thats the place Ive heard can be good for flats…. other than that…. Ive caught them various places, all acidents…..

there is a big hole on the intake of the kings power plant I caught them there…..

ive heard they catch them sometimes where the kings plant flows out and sometimes in that channel….

Ive caught them in the big hole behind the stillwater swing bridge and Ive heard of them caught there too…..

Ive also heard the catfish bar is a good place, theres lots of structure there and I cant dial them in for you there…. if they move around as much as the croix walleyes seem to it can be tough!……

Ive also heard the deep holes up in the osceola-taylors fall area have flats…..

but, bottom line? you want flats… from what Ive seen posted here, I would head for the Mn river….. why not try the best?

Ben, I assume you were fishing out of a boat. If so, I would recomend that you concentrate more on the upper croix, from the dam in taylors falls down to south of franconia( there is an access in franconia and there is a 25 foot hole just south of there). There are several holes on this stretch which hold flatheads on this stretch. If you get a river map of this area they are marked on the map, but there are many more that are not marked. Also there are many feeder creeks and back water cuts, these are fantastic this time of year, especially if there is wood arround it. These spots don’t have to be that deep to be good. One creek mouth I fish is only 4-6 feet deep in front of it but, there are a lot of fish there. These creek mouth and backwater cuts are best after dark. If you do try this area be careful running your boat beacuse there is no maintained channel and a lot of sand bars. If you want to stay on the bis river/ lake try catfish bar near afton or black bass bar further south. catfish bar has a lare flat arround it, but if you get on the north side of the bar and up river from it just a little bit you will find on your depfinder a little trough that runs through. This is a great spot for big channels and there are flatheads there too(although I’ve never caught a big one on that spot) I don’t like the big river/ lake because of all the boat traffic. For this reason I recomend you head north to get away from that. If you have any more questions

Bigtime,

Thanks for the advice! I am still pretty new at this, and was just trying to get a feel for some of the spots on the upper part of the river. When you get up there though, just about every area looks pretty good to fish, with all the wood and snags that are around. Found many springs that enter the river, but not many feeder creeks. Do you look for deeper back bays off the main channel to set up at night for the flats?

I am starting to get a few spots in my mind now! Thanks again

Ben

Some of the inlets that I am talking about aren’t even creeks, some of them are just back water areas that run behind islands off the main river. The best way to find the more productive one is to start fishing right at dark and have a run set up in your mind, then hop from each spot you can think of after every 45 min. If you catch a fish in a spot stay longer. But the first time out I suggest to keep hopping every 45 min. then mark the spots where you caught fish and the next time out you can spend more time at the spots where you caught the fish because that means they are the better holes/spots. Don’t hesitate to fish a spot if it doesn’t necissarly look that good either, be cause sometimes you can be suprised with a spot that doesn’t look all that great and it will end up hlding a lot of fish. Sometimes a big one too. It has happened to me a lot of times before. Another thing to keep in mind is the ammount of current that is flowing through the snag. the less current the better, but don’t avoid fishing a spot because there seems to be some current moving through it. Where I have fished on the croix there are many good looking snags, but I thought there was too much curent flowing through them. I fished them any ways and ended up catching fish from them. Don’t worry about getting far back into the inlets, on the croix they are not extensive enough like on the miss to hold fish later in the summer. They may be in there in the spring during high water or during the spawn, but now thw fish are approaching the end of the spawn and should be relating to the main river more. So I suggest to just fish at the mouth of these types of spots. You can cast baits in further, but I wouldn’t worry about any further up than 10 yards or so from where it enters the main river. Good luck, let me know how you do. If you need more advice or are short for a partner give me a holler. I am always ready for cattin. One more tip. For flatheads I suggest using bullheads on the croix untill sept. You will like them much more than suckers, plus the turtles will leave you alone too. I have had many suckers killed by turtles on the croix while fishing flatheads. Now all I fish are bullheads.