Catching Flatheads On A Slip Float

all right people catfish dave here i made a video catching some big blue cats on some floats somebody said target a flathead so i got my float rigs on me and uh i'm on fort loudoun which is not the greatest place for blue catfish anymore i seem to do actually better on flatheads than i do the blue cats nowadays so i'm up on this rock bank right now and i'm going to attempt to pull out this is a good place to get green sunfish or bluegills or anything live i've got a few in there but i'm just going to get a few more before we head on down river here [Music] oh you all see that massive takedown [Applause] [Applause] so [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] all right people catfish dave here uh sorry about the glare of the sun it'll be going down here in a little bit i'm getting set up for uh some possible flathead fun this is fort loudoun fort loudoun is my least favorite reservoir to fish so i guess i'll call this the fort loudoun flathead challenge now i know that the blue numbers are down from what they used to be but i'm hoping there's still a few flatheads around by the looks of this neighborhood here there could be one in town i'm in a bat cove that never goes completely dry because the shallowest it'll ever get even in winter is about six foot but i've got a lot of really big rocks along this bank that go down into the water big big rocks it's it's flathead hiding area you know so i've got a live gizzard shad said about eight foot out there i've got a live bluegill set about four foot deep right up against these rocks up on the bank someone in my last video where i caught them big blues on the floats at a target of flathead so that's what we're going to do not saying i won't catch a blue tonight but the idea is to try to get a flat hit on video it's a middle of april we've had a strong cold front go through it's gonna be pretty cool tonight i'm gonna have to put my coat on either way it's still spring so gonna see if we can't get hooked up with a flathead on the fort loudoun flathead challenge time for me to get a coat on present situation that gizzard shad has moved close to them rocks which is a good thing now that one in the four foot range he might have got between some rocks because it just quit moving and that bobber sitting sideways that's not a good thing i might try to pull it out of there after i get my coat [Applause] on yeah he was hiding between some rocks i got him pulled out of there now we'll just leave him real close to the boat where he can't cause no more mischief because my boat is right next to this flathead type of neighborhood here so long as i'm good and quiet i can get a fish right next to the there boat goes there it goes there goes the uh gizzard [Applause] it's missing the scale so something had a hold of it around its belly i'm going to go with the uh bluegill on it yeah i've got one more shed i'll go with i'll go with another live shed i guess whatever that was wasn't big enough to take it down a fish of some kind [Applause] that shad didn't pull that float under like that that thing's already been hit and now it's quit swimming it either took it off the hook or it killed it i'll see if it revives man that thing got hit quick but don't start moving soon i got to change it out with a livelier bait i'm hoping it'll recover but the float literally went completely under for a brief second the shad didn't do that i believe it's still barely moving in a wounded state i'm going to go ahead and set up some night light all right people that gizzard shad just ain't moving so it's either been snatched off or whatever hit it killed it so so much for live shad we'll change her out for a live bluegill it snatched it completely off the hook that's either gar or very small flathead could have been a bass that done it who knows anything i'll eat a live shed either way we still ain't seen a flathead but i've still got three bluegills left oh i believe something's on that bluegill yep something's on that bluegill float float just went down float just went down wow a little old flathead come on mr flathead there it is live bait flathead target fish ain't no monster but we got the one we're after whoo i'd say that was small flat heads hitting them baits all right people catfish dave here uh guys are asking about the slip float deal this one was store bought and you can't actually make these at a pool noodle all you really have to do is get some small tubing and it has to be pretty small because this bead cannot go through it because this bead will hit this knot and that knot is your stop to keep that float from going down any more than a certain depth a lot of guys tie a certain type of stop knot those slip those are okay for crappie fishing and stuff like that using heavy baits catching big fish i'm using a pretty heavy wire hook this is an adot team catfish double action i like those on my live bait float rigs they've always done me pretty good uh like i say you can make them just get some pool noodle cut it to the size of the small tubing you have and maybe fill the excess area up with that spray foam you can seal it in there and you can make your own the advantages to using a slip float with the live bait is it allows the bait to do whatever it wants to i can throw this out and it can be a hassle if you use more than one because sometimes they want to swim into each other but they cover quite a bit of ground a lot of times that can be good it creates more movement to attract uh predator fish sometimes it can be bad sometimes the freedom of movement will allow them to swim into rocks or snags or other things so some places it's good some places it's not as good you have to decide that i typically use braided line which is about the only time i use braided line other than catching skip jack and the reason i use braided line with my float rigs is the braid will float you can't control these bobbers what they do and a lot of times they'll float back into you that creates if you had monofilament sag in the line and that sag can get down in rocks and get caught up into stuff uh with the braid the braid will stay on top of the water and it won't get into stuff what i do is if i want to tie this one i set for about five foot deep here i've got a foot of leader so what i do is to get the other four feet is i take four feet of eighty pound monofilament i tie you can see it's a pretty big knot uh and i want it to be because it's going to be the stop for the speed to hit so that's it i got four feet of line a foot a liter that gives me my five foot most of the time i use these shallow so this stop knot never actually gets up onto the reel [Applause] if you do go deeper you may want to use a non-level wine conventional type reel this is an old-school blue yonder abu garcia does not have a level wind on it i've got this one set about eight foot and you can see the stop knot is a lot closer to the reel if i was to set this to 10 or 12 feet well the knot would now be going into the reel and if you had a small level wind this knot could get caught the only disadvantage to this knot that i can find is i have found certain rods that it has trouble around the top guide this akuma rod it's never gave me any trouble my surf rods it's never gave me any trouble going through the top guide but now on this particular rod here the knot sometimes gives me trouble it will go through here but it'll sometimes get caught into these cross things it's the only rod i've ever had that happen with all my other rods and not ghostly fine so that's how it works uh another situation where i use these slip floats it was on a video i done a while back i got some big blues on it there was an extreme amount of wind blowing it was too much to drag baits and uh so what i done is i anchored in one spot through some cut baits out on the bottom and then i allowed the wind to carry these farther away from the boat into shallower water to give me a bigger bait spread so they can be effective at times i don't use them that often most of the times when i do it's in the spring for a little bit of flat head fun there are other companies that make big slip floats like that you just have to look them up i know whisker seeker makes a pretty good size slip float which you can rig the same way you want it to be a very buoyant float because this thing is supposed to work like a noodle when this fish hits the force exerted trying to pull this very buoyant float under the water actually sets the hook on the fish when i see these things go down i'm not that worried about getting to the fish because i know the hook is already set as long as the fish is big enough to get the bait in its mouth hope you all enjoyed the video this is a video there was fish in the video that makes it a fishing video it's catfish today with another one signing out

Channel: Catfish Dave

Views: 49,009

Rating: 4.9506173 out of 5

Keywords: Catfish, Flathead Catfish, Fishing

Id: -6MNXV1DtgQ

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021