FlatHead Baits

Well Lets See When I Was Spending More Time At The River Than With The Family Fishing The Big Flatheads, I Used Several Different Baits For My Arsenal To Catch Them. The First And Best Bait At That Time Was The Sucker Minnow About 6 To 8 Inches Long Live, Then Was The Creek Chub (Pike minnow) That Followed Real Close Behind The Sucker Minnow, Then There Were The Cut Baits Which Could Be Just About Any Thing You Could Throw At Them, But Using The Cut Baits You Always Had The Channel Cat And Other Fish To Deal With While Waiting For That Line Stripping Bite. Man I Need To Find My Old Pictures But I Have Caught Several FlatHeads In The 40lb Range On The Minnows But Not The Huge FlatHeads That Are Out There. Well Now I Believe It's Been A Year Now Going On 2 That They Made The BullHead Legal To Use A Bait Up To 7" Inches You Can Use Bigger But Any Thing Bigger Has To Be Used In The Body Of Water They Came From. Now I Myself Haven't Had The Chance Yet To Catch A Big FlatHead On A BullHead But Have Heard Some Line Stripping Stories About This, I Hope To Some Day Have This Chance To Tell A Story Like This But Till The I Will Be Reading About This Awesome Fish In The Books And On The Net .

i use shad,blue gills,night crawlers,turkey liver

I use bluegill as often as the flathead tolerate. I try to find big rock bass when I can because they move around more and attract attention.



When the water is so warm that gills die on the hook at night I switch to goldfish.
They stay alive and the flathead seem to like them.



Another hardy bait is a small carp but I have a hard time catching one small enough for bait. I occasionally get one in a cast net.



I had heard many people report that bullhead were good flathead bait. I caught some and tried them (about 40 nights) and never got a bite. Maybe the flathead here are picky.

I will use suckers and chubs in Spring while water is still cool but they are hard to keep lively when the weather gets warm.

well i just started using the bullhead for bait last year and have only used them a few times, but i did have a couple of good runs on them but know hook ups. hope to get to use them again next season on the minnesota river when we do a 50 mile float and hit a few of my hot spots that you can't walk to any more. thanks for the pictures and info robby.

North Star wrote:

well i just started using the bullhead for bait last year and have only used them a few times, but i did have a couple of good runs on them but know hook ups. hope to get to use them again next season on the minnesota river when we do a 50 mile float and hit a few of my hot spots that you can't walk to any more. thanks for the pictures and info robby.

I cant wait for that trip

i use Live 4-8 inch creek chubs
live sucker chubs 4-8 inches long
live bluegills
cut shad
cut bluegills
Live Goldfish

The rock bass is my first choice then its sun perch.