A Guide To North Carolina Catfish Fishing

When it comes to fishing for catfish in North Carolina, you can have a great time and bring home a good sized, tasty catch whether you want to fish in creeks, lakes, rivers, or ponds! Whether you want to fish from the bank, from a boat, or from a canoe, catfishing is a sport you can enjoy.

The following list should help you target some of the premier catfishing waters in North Carolina!

Lake Chatuge: Most of the mountain folk in the Lake Chatuge area do not fish for catfish. Smallies are the #1 target there, but just because the target is not normally catfish does not mean there is any shortage of channel cats in these waters. In fact, the catfish are plentiful at Lake Chatuge. The fishing pressure is much less in this area as well, giving catfish anglers a unique opportunity to target these tasty game fish, experience a heck of a fight, and have an excellent dinner when the day is done.

The average size for channel cats on Lake Chatuge is from one to five pound range, but it is not uncommon to pull 20 pounders from these waters either.

Good baits to use here are anything from commercially prepared baits to hot dogs, chicken livers, crawfish, and offerings such as fresh cut bait like shad or herring. If you are fishing the upper part of the lake, the waters are going to be shallow. Just drift fish the bottom, dragging your cut bait along (use a walking sinker, if you are getting hung up too much) and the cats will hear the dinner bell calling them to take a bite. If you are fishing the deeper areas of the lake, set your anchor and night fish over points. Don't think you can't catch the cats off the bottom at night, because they move into different depths to feed at night.

You can fish this lake with either a Georgia or a North Carolina fishing
license.

Lake Norman: Though flathead and blue catfish are not native to North Carolina, they are abundant in Lake Norman. Anglers in the area started catching them really well in the 80s, and they are becoming more and more popular in the area. It is easy to pull flathead from the lake in the twenty pound range and blue cats weighing in the thirty pound range are not uncommon.

The natural forage for the blues is freshwater mussels in the warm months, and you will do well to use them as bait, particularly if you obtain them from these waters. The back end of the lake is the prime area to catch these catfish. Late in the spring the fish tend to move a bit to the upper end, and stay pretty thick in there for the next several months.

Other good baits to use are cut bait (probably the single best choice for catching blue and channel cats in Lake Norman). Use Gizzard and threadfin shad, blueback herring, and alewives make excellent cut bait for catching catfish in Lake Norman.