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Brett Mitchell with Santee Cooper blue catfish

How to Drift Fish for Catfish

Drifting allows you to cover water and find feeding fish and is extremely effective for catching catfish during summer. Learn the approach of a Santee Cooper catfish guide.

“That’s the kind we want,” Capt. Brett Mitchell said with a confident smile as the stout rod I was holding bent hard and the line peeled off a tight drag. Several minutes later his assertion was affirmed as a fat blue catfish came into sight and eventually got within reach of Mitchell’s big net. Putting a 27-pound catfish is a good start to any day.

“Drag a bait around here, and you you’re going to catch catfish,” said Mitchell, who operates Fishing with Brett on South Carolina’s Santee Cooper lakes. Mitchell also guides for bass and stripers and fishes a variety of ways, but his primary summer approach is to drift the open waters of Lake Moultrie – the Lower Lake in the Santee Cooper system – for catfish.

Mitchell catches occasional channel and flathead catfish, but blue cats are the main attraction, and any time a rod bows on the Santee Cooper lakes, the fish at the terminal end might weigh 6 pounds or 60 pounds.

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