Floats and Channel Cats in Lakes…

So I stumbled across a nice Channel Cat fishery the other day that’s rather unique in my opinion. It’s a lake. Yes it has connections to a river, but I’m surprised that there’s a decent number of 8lb+ Channel Cats there. Now the use of a typical slip rig as one would use for bottom fishing the rivers works fine now. On occasion there’s a pile of weeds wrapped on the sinker when I reel in to change baits, but at least I don’t need to carry 5oz No-Roll sinkers when the water is cruising in the rivers. I was wondering though, for those that have fished lakes for Catfish, how well do floats work? I’ve contemplated going again with a large slip float rig. It would keep my bait and sinker out of the weeds and be a nice bite indicator since some of the fish just inhale the bait and sit, or as one did, swim towards me after taking the bait.

What’s everyone’s thoughts on a slip float rig for these current-free Cats? Or are there better ways to target them that help keep the bait out of the weeds and out of the muck on the bottom?

You said slip bobber? LOL works great. Just a little weight is all that’s needed.

Problem is if fishing night, the cats will bite throughout the water column. Typically I would set bait, around three to five feet below the surface. Fish may come shallow water or remain out there over deeper water.

Float will work just fine. They’ll smell the bait and find it.

slip bobber will wrk good, heck some of us even do it on river with big live bait.
depending on the buoyancy of the float and how aggressive the fish hit sometimes they will hook themselves using Circles.

Drifting baits vertical is another good technique also

I Don’t use anything but floats.. I like splashbrights.

Slip bobber work wonders in weeds. Try to set the depth just above the weeds and the cats will find your bait and You will know it. I was doing this just last night on a local reservoir. I have some of the Whisker Seeker Nightstrike lighted bobbers. And they worked great. Even caught a flat head last night. Would have never known I even had a bite but the lighted bobber moved directly at the boat. By the time I got all the slack out and could feel the fish, it was 10′ from the boat.

One thing about bobber fishing, don’t use circle hooks. The objective of the circle hook is to get enough pressure from the fish pulling to move the hook to the corner of the mouth and hook up. You don’t usually get enough pressure on the line to do this so when you try to set the hook, you end up just pulling the circle hook out of the fishes mouth. I love circle hooks, but not with bobbers.

I know of a lake nearby that has cats-can you get them during the day? Also where on the lake do you look? (structure etc.)
Thanks