Chad Ferguson is a professional catfish guide and founder of Learn To Catch Catfish. You can get more from me on Twitter or Google
Fishing line is the critical link when it comes to landing fish. The goal when choosing fishing line is to find something heavy enough that is capable of landing the fish you will be catching but still maintaining an appropriate balance of performance.A good rule of thumb to follow is the heavier the line is [...]
The internet is littered with instructions on fishing knots and there are entire books and even iPhone apps dedicated to them. Most of these resources are full of “clutter” and teach you a lot of information that you don’t need to know. What’s the point of learning tons of fishing knots you’re not ever going to [...]
Like many other hobbies and sports, fishing can get really expensive. This is especially true if you get serious about fishing and start investing a lot of time into it. One of the great things about fishing for catfish is that you can get by without a ton of fishing tackle and gear and you [...]
My tackle storage is simplistic. It is light and portable and everything is easy to find. With this catfish tackle box setup I can easily grab a small box and jump in someone else’s boat and have everything I need, or in the event I decide to head off on foot and do some shore fishing [...]
Skinny water fishing is some of my favorite fishing. I spent much of the time I fish for channel catfish focusing on skinny water and some of my favorite blue catfish action of the year takes place in skinny water. I made a reference to skinny water fishing a few weeks ago and immediately started [...]
Here in Texas we don’t have a fishing “season” we can fish all year long. My catfish boat never gets winterized and winter is one of my busiest seasons so there is very little downtime for my boat. There are masses of anglers though that cannot fish in the fall and winter due to the weather [...]
Drift fishing for catfish is often a controversial topic, especially when you get into circles of really hardcore catfish anglers and tournament anglers. There are groups of anglers who will testify to the effectiveness of drift fishing for catfish but there is also the other side, the anti-drift-fishing anglers. These anglers will claim drift fishing [...]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download Show Summary: This Catfishing Radio podcast covers everything you need to know about transition periods including what a transition period is, how it affects the fishing and what you can do to help you locate and catch fish during a transition period. Catfishing Radio is back with Episode [...]
Circle hooks are without a doubt the most popular hooks for blue catfish, especially in recent years. Most people either love circle hooks or or hate them and there is not a lot of “in between”. Years ago, I kept hearing catfish anglers praise circle hooks and I tried them several times and could not [...]
Drift fishing can be a very effective catfishing technique for targeting blue catfish and channel catfish. Like other techniques, it has a time and a place and certainly can be more effective at certain times of the year. For the beginning angler drift fishing is an excellent way to get on the water and start [...]
When fishing for channel catfish I focus on catching numbers of fish. In most areas of the United States, this will be the best option. There are fisheries that have excellent numbers of larger channel catfish but they are limited and most anglers that decide to target big fish target blue or flathead catfish. Most [...]
I remember as a kid we constantly had a big stack of these rigs laying around that we would buy at the local bait shop. We’d buy the single rigs (similar to a three way rig, but already tied) and the double rigs or “fish finder rigs” with two leaders and two hooks. If we [...]
