How many flats did you catch last year?

How many, what area or river, how many trips if you remember.

Too many. I’m a walleye fisherman. Just kidding. I fish the Mississippi from the St Croix down to Lake Pepin. My cats are more by accident so I don’t catch that many. About 4-5 dozen, but they range from 6 inches up to 20 lbs. Great fun on walleye tackle.

No FLATS for me they all had BIG BREASTS

You are a river rat huh

Randy? Does Kelly know you got out again?

I still don’t have a tally for 09..but I’m sure it was less than 08, but they were larger fish.

Hey guys I was being serious. There is a picture thread of big fish from last year but I was wondering about the population, especially what’s normal on the MN river. Can you catch one a weekend on average? or 5 or 10?

Josh, they have a catfish tournament at Franklin, MN every year. To win, you have to have a flat over 50 and a channel over 20. It is like fishing every where, depends on whether or not they decide to come out and play. I live here. When you get ready to come up, send me a PM and we will see what we can find.

Where in central Iowa?

’08 was a great year for me, boated around 100 myself and handled some other VERY large fish.

last year, not so much, maybe 50-75

Mostly the catch rate is directly proportionate to hours on the water. From April-September, I probably fished 600 hours last year.

So 10hr/fish is a fair estimate I think. This means sometimes 2 in 5 hours, or 1 in 20 hours. The single most important thing to do to up your odds, is be on the water during the prime prespawn bite (May/June).

Nstar, thanks. I appreciate it. I live just a little West of Ames.

Dtro, thanks that’s exactly what I was wishing for. I’m guilty as the next guy for wanting things to be easy. I think I caught 4 or 5 last year. I don’t think I went +/-100 hours, a significant portion in spots more likely to have channels than flats. More time wasted catching bait, etc.

I’m almost embarrased to say just got a couple last year, during the same trip. I did miss a few good pick-ups, and had a few break-offs too.

I only got out 3 times for about 15 or so hours of flathead fishing (well 4 if you count my birthday when I launched and fished maybe 1.5-2 hours in between torrential rains at two different launches before calling it quits).

Our groups fishing data with ILDNR shows – 2008 we fished 1819 hours, spending 8.74 hours per fish. 2009, we had 903 hours with 6.1 hours per fish (we lost a few members who spent a lot of hours, and I think more guys waited to head out until the bite was on).

A few things to keep in mind, our local river has short pools where you can run maybe 4.5-5 miles in a typical evening. So, we probably fish more spots with less time scouting and in transit. That translates to more baits in the water. Also, we can fish 3 or 4 rods per man at a time and really cover a spot, which makes a huge difference in catch rates. I’m sure we have some members averaging a few hours per fish, which makes sense with the larger amount of baits in the water.

last summer was crap for us on pools 11 and 12. Between not getting out as much to just simply not finding and getting on the fish. The ones we did manage were small.I’m hoping we can up our catch rate dramatically this year.

The big fish are out there, it’s just a matter of putting in a LOT of time.

The past 4 years, I’ve either caught and or put the net under at least one over 50. Looking to continue that this year, but I’m sure I just jinxed myself.

Last year was my first year of targeting night time flats. I did not get out until mid Aug. so I missed the May June pre-spawn.We got out about 10 times averaging 4 hrs per trip.
The first 5 times we got skunked.We ended up catching 6 flatheads, so 1 fish each 6.6 hrs.We had some nice fish on that we lost due to equipment failure. With those problems ironed out I think those numbers will look better at the end of 2010
Dave

Man i wish we would have counted how many flats we caught last year – it was a good amount.

I would have to say that we went out around 3-4 nights a week. A rough estimate on amount of flatheads, I would have to say around 50, but once again we put in a ridiculous amount of time (ask our wifes ). 50 is a huge number for us as we are not able to be the most mobile.

However, the biggest from last year was 35lbs, but was out of a canoe

RyanK and I canoe flats mostly starting at 9pm or later through the night. We could manage most rivers last year – this year is putting the scare on me with the high waters.

Hoping for a 40+lber this year out of the canoe!

Interesting discussion, really does illustrate the importance of time on the water and fishing during the good bite (last year that was late May into mid-Sept. around here; October was awful).

Shawn