Dont think for a second I would consider rigging live bait in brush piles at night for flatheads with a second hook BUT:\\

I fished 9 poles last night, rebaited two separate times.  4 of my poles were disabled or baitless by 9:30pm.  I drag my lines out with the boat and fish from the bank .  I do not usually have to be in the water unless a substantial number of poles are fouled.  Stirs up the water at a time I want to be quiet.

I probably had 20 different fish run with my bait last night and caught only 2 small flatheads and one gar.  I know I had at least one turtle messing with me and I suspect a couple of gar but I know by the scaleless fish left on the hook that catfish were running with bait also.  Could not seem to set the hook on them.

Do any of you guys have suggestions for this type of behavior.  Last night was kinda frustrating, even though I got absolutly no sleep.  That is usually a good thing when fishing.

  thats exactly what i was going to say! those are runt channels, too small to actually eat it or bigger ones that are crushing the bait thinking its a threat to their nearby spawning nest.

I hadnt thought about channel cats spawning.  I usually do not have trouble with them since my bait is a little large for anything but a pretty good size channel.

These were not the run of the mill gar runs.  They were steady and not as fast.  I pulled the bait out of the fishes mouth 3 or 4 times while they dropped them before I got a hookset on most of the occasions.

I have had other nights when I had trouble hooking the fish but this one was disappointing.

On the lighter side, I did catch my first flatheads of the year even though they were small.

I plan on going back this weekend so I will give you a heads up Sunday.

By the by Bowhunter, how did you know I was at Burnsville from my post?

I got that same problem with channel cats. Thier a real pain when flathead fishing. Afew years ago I had the same problem with stripers. Everywhere I went flathead fishing ,I would get stripers on live bream. That became real fustrating. Stripers hang around brushpiles alot.

I think Jim is right...they're leatherbacks.  I've had this experiece quite a bit.  I've spent many nights distinguishing bites between snappers, leatherbacks, drum perch, channel cats, gar, striper, and flatheads....all culprits when fishing with live baits.  Snappers make short, sharp, slow runs, while leatherbacks make steadiers runs similar to a flathead.  Channel Cat make fast runs, sometimes short or long, as do drum.  Gar and Striper usually scream line off the reels, with stripers holding onto the bait for longer periods of time and commonly swallowing the bait.  

This has been my experience with different runs and bites with live bluegills/shiners/goldfish.

This was how the gar was hitting down at Henderson below the Newburg dam, I know, I finally caught one 4.5 feet long and my son caught one a little over 5 feet long but we were fishing cut shad and skipjack for blues.

yeah blue gill are becoming a problem there---I think we are wearing em out,,,maybe bring your own will be the way to go  ::

With the exception of trout, the only stocking the DNR does is the little 2 acre put and take lakes and the OHIO river,,,all other major lakes and streams are on their own under the current warm water fisheries management :cry: