Palouse river catfish

[schu7498]

My husband Danny and I will be headed over to the Palouse this weekend to try and figure out the catfish fishery. I figure the fishing is better in early june, but we were not able to take off the time until this coming weekend. We have never fished for cats before, but I figure something along the lines of a carolina rig plunked with some sort of cut bait or worms could work. Do you guys have any other advice? We will have a small boat that will allow us to go up and down the river.

[zen leecher aka Bill W]

I like to use a bobber with the bait hanging maybe 3 feet deep. The main bay is fairly shallow.

If you go up the river watch your prop in some of the areas.

[BentRod]

Growing up over there we always plunked for them using either a three way swivel or a sliding weight setup with a short dropper line to the weight. Bait was typically chicken livers or night crawlers, but they'll eat most anything.
Good luck!

[rojomojo]

A semi-secret I have for cats is the bait. I use Mormon Crickets before they spray for them. They sprawl out when hooked and they have large amounts of grasshopper black goop stuff that seeps out of their mouths that the catfish love. I haven't looked for this year to see if they sprayed for them but if you send me a personal message I can tell you where to look for massive amounts on the way there.

WDFW has a video with some basic stuff in it, watch toward the last couple of minutes:
https://youtu.be/ewPWnGYG--U" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This site has a youtube video that has intel also:
https://youtu.be/_FZM-qOI2So" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[losaturn]

The times I fished that river, I just used pet shop crickets on a carolina rig. Worked great, even better than cut bait or shrimp.

[schu7498]

thanks for the replys guys! I will have to get some crickets and try them out. I really like the float idea. Will it be obvious where the shallow flats are? We wont have a depth finder, I guess we could always bring a stick, lol, since it seems like most folks are fishing in around 2ft of water.

[zen leecher aka Bill W]

the channel is on the right side going in. Amost all the rest is shallow mud flats. The first time we fished there we cruised all over trying to find fish and thumped a couple of what we thought were carp. Turned out they were catfish as the catfish also liked the shallow parts.

Ask the people at the KOA to mark up a map for you showing the current channel. I understand it moves around.

[crappiemaster]

Curious to know how the catfishing went up on the Palouse . I heard that the mouth of the Yakima river was hot this year for channel cats. Might be worth checking out next time if you wanted to get in some bottom fishing.