Pound for pound the strongest catfish are channels in my opinion.

in my area were i live in minnesota, just about every cree and little river has channels in them. the smaller creeks have the smaller channels, but the bigger creeks have channels up to 20lbs. i use both the light tackle and the heavy tackle because you run into a northern every now and then that will be in the same weight range. now in the minnesota river i use all heavy tackle and gear for there are the flatheads that get up to 60lbs some bigger but not many. the 20 1/2 lb in my avatar is from the minnesota river that i caught use strawberry smelt, but have caught many on just plain smelt and suckers.