# The "Flathead roll"



## dinkbuster1 (Oct 28, 2005)

i am sure most all catfishermen have seen and heard the "flathead roll", but what it is doing has always been a mystery to me. have heard and seen it during the day but mostly during the wee hours of the night. 

an old man whom i used to paypond fish with taught me how to distinguish between a blue, flathead, and channel coming to the surface and "roll" (he called it "rolling"). seems a flathead "rolls" more often in lakes, especially in payponds years ago, but have seen it from time to time in slower river pools and eddy's. 

in case you dont know what i am talking about iuts the big WHOOSH a flathead makes on the suface throwing water everywhere, only thing i could describe it to is what i have seen great white sharks do on TV grabbing something on the surface. 

what i'd like to know is are they just flipping and throwing their tail like a channel does, or are they ambushing baitfish on the surface? 

a friend swears he seen a flathead about 15lb do it once right next to his canoe, said the fish was swimming very slow comming to the surface with its mouth wide open (like a basking shark), he turned to look at the bank and then "WHOOSH". he didnt get to see exactly what it done though. 

any comments


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## M.Magis (Apr 5, 2004)

I've never seen or heard of such a thing. The only time I've ever heard a flathead make any surface commotion is while spawning in shallow water.


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## H2O Mellon (Apr 5, 2004)

Flathead.... What the heck is that? 

Two more weeks.... two more weeks....


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## bassattacker (Mar 14, 2007)

DinkBuster1, out at the club this is what ive seen, we usually see a pcoket of air bubbles coming up from below, then about 5 seconds later a big whoosh on top of the water, for the longest time we was thinking it was bass chasing up baitfish and dismissed it, then one night we was fishing some weed beds that has some huge logs going through it when we noticed this going on, then started seeing gills coming outta the water like they was runnin from something, so we turned on the latern and there was about a 20lb flathead sitting there in about 1-2ft of water chasing gills up, i agree it def sounds like a whoosh.


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## Randy101 (Jan 7, 2010)

Blues and shovels are chasing bait fish (shad) to the surface, When I see a lot of this action I shallow up.....as most of you know, I fish paylakes with a slip float and observe this all the time.


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## dinkbuster1 (Oct 28, 2005)

Randy101 said:


> Blues and shovels are chasing bait fish (shad) to the surface, When I see a lot of this action I shallow up.....as most of you know, I fish paylakes with a slip float and observe this all the time.


i recently talked to a couple guys whom had actually seen it as it happened and both said they seen the flats chase something to the surface. also the same imput fromn a thread on the BOC. guess my question has been answered!


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## pendog66 (Mar 23, 2005)

i can just see the dink wheels turning and figuring out how to get topwater flatties


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## dinkbuster1 (Oct 28, 2005)

pendog66 said:


> i can just see the dink wheels turning and figuring out how to get topwater flatties


lol, yup! actually, i do not see it happen often in the river and when i do it seems its the same size fish/same fish doing it over and over. almost every time its smaller fish except for lakes, seen pretty big ones do it in non moving water. one exception was during a big bright full moon many years ago. there was a fish in a spot on the GMR that made a "roll" bigger than i have seen anywhere! it kept doing it every 10 min or so all over the hole. we were in a boat and kept drifting live chubs with a big float over the areas about 4ft deep but never enticed it to hit.


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## pendog66 (Mar 23, 2005)

dinkbuster1 said:


> lol, yup! actually, i do not see it happen often in the river and when i do it seems its the same size fish/same fish doing it over and over. almost every time its smaller fish except for lakes, seen pretty big ones do it in non moving water. one exception was during a big bright full moon many years ago. there was a fish in a spot on the GMR that made a "roll" bigger than i have seen anywhere! it kept doing it every 10 min or so all over the hole. we were in a boat and kept drifting live chubs with a big float over the areas about 4ft deep but never enticed it to hit.



i remember one last year during a nasty thunderstorm. The river was rising quickly and a monster rolled about 5ft away from the bank, it scared the crap out of me


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