Anglers commonly catch 30- to 60-pound blues and flatheads on trotlines or limblines in the swamps southwest of New Orleans, and Harold W. Clubb landed the state-record channel catfish there in August 1977. While bass fishing in the Miner's Canal, near Lake Theriot southwest of Houma, Clubb landed a 30.31-pound whiskered lunker that gulped a homemade spinnerbait with a curly plastic tail. He fought the giant fish for more than 30 minutes, thinking that it might break his 10-pound line at any moment.

In Louisiana, people still need to fish the major rivers for monster catfish. The Red River flows down from the Great Plains between Texas and Oklahoma, across Louisiana and into the Mississippi River through a series of managed channels and control structures near Simmesport. Taking 30 percent of the flow from the Mississippi, the Atchafalaya actually breaks off from the Red at the Lower Old River channel and heads toward the Gulf of Mexico at Morgan City.

The Mississippi, Red and Atchafalaya rivers can each produce many blue cats in the 40- to 80-pound range, with some exceeding 100 pounds. In April 2005, Keith Day topped the Louisiana blue cat charts with a 110.19-pound fish he landed in the Mississippi River near St. Francisville.

The Mississippi produced four of the top five blue cats landed in the state with the Red River, Atchafalaya and West Pearl each contributing one monster to the Top 10. The Red River produced the top two flathead catfish. Harley Rakes holds the flathead record with a 66-pounder that he pulled from the Red River near Shreveport in July 1998, but people sometimes catch larger fish without reporting them.

For fishing the big rivers, many people look for concentrations of shad or skipjack, especially in slack waters behind rock or concrete jetties. Once people find potentially good areas for fishing, they often park their boats on a sandbar and fish from the bank rather than fight the awesome, dangerous currents. Some people sit on the jetty rocks.

“The Mississippi, Black and Ouachita rivers produce a lot of big blues and flathead catfish,” said David Hickman, an LDWF biologist in Ferriday. “The Mississippi River and its backwater lakes are great places to catch huge flatheads, blues and channels. We catch 40- to 50-pound cats each year in our net sampling. The Old River Control Structure and the locks by Simmesport produce a lot of big fish. Some people fish off the banks fairly close to the structures.”