Clarks Hill Catfish On The Rocks In May

They might have a face only momma could love, but big flathead catfish are fun to catch and provide great table fare. A trip to Clarks Hill in May is tough to beat.

Flathead catfish are spawning on rocks at Clarks Hill right now, and you can have fun catching them for the next two months. Go after a mess to eat, or try to break the lake record—but be forewarned, breaking a catfish record at Clarks Hill will require a monster fish! The flathead record was set just last year with a 70-lb. giant—you can see that fish in the sidebar on the next page.

I grew up fishing Clarks Hill and spent many summer nights sitting by a campfire with rods out for catfish. My church group camped on Germany Creek a few times each summer, as did my family. In 1966, my family joined Raysville Boat Club, and I fished in that area for many years.

In the 1970s and 80s, I ran trotlines, bank hooks and jugs dozens of nights each year. Our favorite bait was a live 2- to 3-inch bream. We caught many blue and channel cats, but, even though flathead catfish love little bream, we never caught a flathead. Some folks say they have seen pictures of flatheads caught from Clarks Hill during the 1960s, but we never landed one.

Then, around the early 1990s, I saw a report of a 40-lb. flathead caught in Little River, not far from where I fished all those nights. It seems flatheads were illegally stocked in the lake and their population exploded, with fish growing quickly to trophy levels.

One morning last April, I was bass fishing the rip-rap at the Raysville bridge, which is the Highway 43 bridge on Georgia’s Little River. While fishing a spinnerbait for bass, I landed an 8-lb. flathead and then a 12-lb. flathead. Later that day, I watched two fishermen easing down the rip-rap, lobbing what looked like cutbait to the rocks. I saw them boat more than a dozen flatheads in the 5-lb. range.

I talked with them, and they said they caught flatheads on the rip-rap rocks that way every year starting in April. They said they could get a cooler full most trips from late April through May into June.

That night, I talked with my cousin Jack Garrison. We share fishing information a lot when I’m visiting and staying at Raysville Boat Club—Jack now lives there full-time. He told me some stories about catching flatheads with the help of local anglers who specialize in fishing for them.

“From mid-April through early June, flatheads are spawning on rocks, and they are easy to catch,” Jack said. He often took his twin grandsons, Conner and Cooper Garrison, to have fun catching catfish when they visited Clarks Hill.

Conner and Cooper Garrison enjoy catching Clarks Hill catfish with their grandpa, Jack Garrison.

Jack explained the way to catch them, and it matched the way I had seen it done that day by the anglers at the Raysville rip-rap. Pitch a weightless cutbait or nightcrawler to the very edge of the rocks, and slowly ease the bait along the rocks, staying in contact with the bottom as you work the bait back to the boat.

If you have good electronics, you can see that the rip-rap on bridges usually has a defined edge out from the bank where it ends. That gives you a stretch of rocks to fish from inches deep out to 15 or 20 feet in some areas. And the flatheads will be in those rocks somewhere, often concentrating right on the outer edge where the rocks end.

Big nightcrawler earthworms are good, as is cutbait. Blueback herring are great for using as cutbait for catfish. Raysville Marina sells packs of frozen, 6-inch herring that are just right for cutting in half. Frozen blueback herring are easy to handle and keep during a long day or night of fishing. Raysville also sells live herring if you prefer to dice up some fresh fish to use as bait.

DJ Hadden, who runs Hadden Outdoors in Appling near Keg Creek, sells live blueback herring and will have frozen baitfish starting this month. DJ said he thinks fresh dead herring or cutting live ones makes better bait than frozen ones, since they stay on the hook better.

Cutbait works great when fishing for catfish in May that are spawning or feeding on shallow rocks and rip-rap. Fresh or frozen herring work very well at Clarks Hill.

Nightcrawlers will also catch plenty of catfish.

Jack rigs a heavy-wire 1/0 hook on 10- to 20-lb. line on his heavy spinning outfit. A tough line is needed since you are fishing in rocks, but depending on your spinning reel, it might not handle too heavy of a line. You might prefer a baitcaster, but a spinning outfit makes it easier to pitch a light cutbait to the rocks without slinging it off during the cast.

The water temperature the third week of April last year was about 68 degrees, and herring and shad had been spawning on the rocks, making the rip-rap even more attractive to catfish. The flatheads feed on the herring and shad both before, during and after their spawn. Blue cats and channel cats will also feed with them, but flatheads are more common during the baitfish spawn.

Jack and I tried fishing the first week of April, but the cold nights had kept the water temperature down around 61 degrees, too cold to move the flatheads to the rocks. But he showed me the technique.

We fished from my bass boat since Jack’s 40-foot pontoon was not running. After cutting in half some 6-inch frozen bluebacks bought from Raysville Bait and Tackle, we put them or a big nightcrawler on our hooks.

I tried to keep my boat right on the outer edge of the rip-rap, about 25 feet from the bank in most stretches. But the wind made it difficult, swinging the back of the boat in and out since I had to barely hit the trolling motor. We had to slowly inch along to allow our baits to stay on the bottom.

Several times I hit my spot lock, and that worked great to allow us to move our baits very slowly. Jack said he often noses his pontoon in to the rocks, anchoring the back, and he is able to sit in one place and cover a good section of rocks with 40 feet of boat to work from.

Catfish, especially flatheads, concentrate on rip-rap rocks in May. A weightless hook with cutbait or a nightcrawler eased through the rocks will produce bites.

Jack told me he wanted to drop his bait into cracks between rocks—showing me examples that we could see up on the bank out of the water. The water was very stained the day we fished, but we could see a few inches down to spot the edges of rocks.

Barely raising our rod tips to move the bait an inch or two, then letting it settle to the bottom took some time and patience, but that is what you need to do. And, surprisingly, we seldom got hung. Most of the time, our weightless baits slid over the rocks easily.

A little breeze blowing down the rocks can move you along with just a few adjustments. Last April while I watched, the men catching the flatheads let the wind move them very slowly, bumping the trolling motor rarely to keep the boat in position. With stronger wind, you have to go against it to go slowly enough.

Current moving over the rocks makes the catfish bite better. You can call the Corps of Engineers at 800.533.3478 to get the generation schedule. Just remember to adjust for distances from the dam. For example, it takes about two to three hours for water to start moving at Raysville bridge. And the ebb after generation ends at the dam will make current flow upstream at the bridge.

Other bridges hold flatheads during the spawn, as do other steep rocky banks. Georgia’s Little River seems to have the highest concentrations of flatheads, but they are all over the lake. DJ Hadden says the Highway 47 bridge—called Prices Bridge locally—holds large numbers of flatheads now. And it is much longer, with about 2 miles of rip-rap to fish.

The two bridges in Soap Creek can be good, with the lower Highway 220 one having more rip-rap to fish than the Highway 378 bridge. And the rip-rap on the Highway 379 bridge over both the Savannah River and South Carolina Little River holds them, too.

If you don’t want the road noise and potential company of other anglers at bridges, go to any steep, rocky bank on the main lake or primary creek. Good rocky banks are all over the lake. The islands out from Mistletoe State Park are particularly good, as are the upstream and downstream points of that creek.

The small island out from Raysville Campground has a steep rocky upstream point, and flatheads like it. Some of the points along the south bank of Georgia Little River both above and below the Highway 47 bridge are also good. Those are just a few examples of the kinds of places they spawn if you look for them.

Flatheads will feed all year long, too. The lake rod and reel record is a huge 70-pounder Michael Dollar landed on March 2, 2023. And even larger ones have been landed on trotlines that did not qualify for the rod and reel records.

Michael was trolling for crappie with a small jig and 6-lb. line and had an incredible fight. His picture with the fish is displayed at Bob’s Cafe in Raysville Bait and Tackle. Pro tip… get you bait and dinner at the same place. Eating at a bait and tackle store may seem unappetizing, and I avoided it for years, but after trying Bob’s Cafe at Raysville one time, I never miss eating there while on a trip in the area. Warning, it is so popular that wait times for a table on the weekend are often more than an hour!

70 Pound Flathead On 6-lb. Test Sets New Clarks Hill Record

In hotter weather after the spawn, several tactics work to put catfish in the boat. DJ said he has even seen flatheads schooling and chasing herring with bass and hybrids on the lower lake, but that is probably not the best way to target flathead catfish.

Night fishing is a productive, comfortable way to catch flatheads. The bite seems be best from sundown to midnight, but they may bite all night long. Buy some bluebacks and nightcrawlers, or catch some bluegill with hook and line to use as bait.

If you have a cast net, you can net your own bluebacks, threadfin and gizzard shad, especially throwing it around a dock light at night. Get a cooler full and anchor your boat in 12 to 15 feet of water anywhere the bottom is rocky.

Grays Creek and Mims Branch both have areas of big boulders and are good just like the above-mentioned spawning areas. Really, any point or hump with rocks near a channel that tops out 12 to 15 feet deep is good.

You can try chumming with chunks of baitfish if you have plenty. Throw it out in a circle around your boat. Rig a 1/0 heavy-wire hook on 15- to 20-lb. line. Rig your hook on a Carolina rig with a 1/2-oz. sinker 3 feet from the hook above a swivel. Cast your bait out and relax. A flathead will chomp down hard on it and then swim off slowly, until it feels your line. When a big flathead does feel resistance, your rod better be in a good holder or held tightly.

Use smaller bait for eating-sized flatheads and other cats, but go with big baits if you’re going for a big catfish. Although the record flathead hit a crappie jig, they normally like big baits. Rigging a 7- or 8-inch blueback or gizzard shad on a heavy-wire 5/0 hook gives you a better chance of getting one on your line and landing it.

You can catch other species in similar ways, too. Back in the late 1970s, Ralph Barbee Jr. specialized in catching cats at Clarks Hill and still holds the record for blue cat, a 62-pounder caught in September 1979. And he said he had even bigger ones that he lost at the boat trying to land them. The record channel cat is a 25-lb., 2-oz. fish caught by James Gunn in May of 1993. There is no doubt there are bigger blue and channel cats in the lake, and they bite most of the year.

All species of catfish feed and spawn in similar areas, so you never know which flavor of cat might bite next, but all give a good fight and make a great meal.

Plan a May trip for catfish on the rocks at Clarks Hill.