Channel cats

[catfishman89]

Does anyone know of any spots around the portland area that you can go and catch a channel catfish. I used to catch alot at lake river in felida washington but they all seemed to dissappear a couple years ago. My thought is that gilbert river and the multnomah channel probably have channel cats and i only live 5 miles from both of these spots. The gilbert river is also similar to lake river except for it is deeper and has more structure.


Is it too ealry to catch walleyes and bass at rufus from the bank. I am going there next week.

[Dan360]

A guy told me that he caught a bunch of channel cat the other day on Sauvie Island. I don't know if they were really channel cats. Seems like they are misidentified quite a bit. I saw a guy with a big stringer of brown bullheads, telling me they were channel cats.

[catfishman89]

I know that there are probably millions of bullheads on sauvies.

[wsuweston]

I tried fishing for cats in Van. Lake, but al we got was crawdads eating our bait.

[myxxolydyan]

I've attached an artists drawings of three different species of catfish. They all look very similar.

image 1) Brown bullhead catfish
image 2) channel catfish
image 3) yellow bullhead catfish

[bucketmouth]

I've attached an artists drawings of three different species of catfish. They all look very similar.

image 1) Brown bullhead catfish
image 2) channel catfish
image 3) yellow bullhead catfish

In shape, yes they look alike, but cannnels are silver with a deep veed tail. Hard to miss-identify when comparing to bullhead.

Channels are nonetheless caught on sauvies island both in the lakes and the multnomah channel. They are available throughout the first 30 miles of the Willamette too. You can get small babies that are about the size of bullheads, but generally they are much larger than yellow bellies or borwn bullhead.