May, June and July are the best months of the year to fish for catfish in Oklahoma.

That's not to say that you can't catch Soonerland catfish during any month of the year. Even in the cold months of winter, catfishing can be profitable at some reservoirs, especially for blue cats. But our "big three" catfish species -- blues, channels and flatheads -- are spawning during the above-named months, and so it's easy to find them at this time of year.

And once you know where to find them, you can fill your stringers or livewells with lots of big whiskered specimens that'll provide a lot of tasty eating for months to come.

All three species like the same kinds of spawning areas: rocky, bluff-like shorelines, piles of boulders, shores with pockets or undercut banks, and riprapped shorelines -- in short, places providing cavities within which the females can deposit eggs in a sheltered spot, and where males can fertilize and guard the eggs as they develop.

In some prime spawning areas, spawning catfish practically have to take a number and wait for the choicest spots to be vacated by one species before the next moves in.

In Oklahoma, blues typically spawn slightly earlier than do channel cats -- sometimes as early as April, but typically starting in May and stretching into June. Channel cats in this state usually begin spawning in mid to late May and continue through mid-June. Flatheads are the latest spawners. They usually move into the nesting areas in mid-June and continue through early-to-mid July.

With most freshwater fish species, spawning activity is triggered by water temperature, which, of course, can vary from year to year, depending on whether late spring brings lots of cloudy and cold weather or sunshine and warm conditions.

In general, though, you can expect blues and channels to begin spawning when surface water temperatures reach 70 degrees. Some activity may begin when water temperatures are still in the mid to high 60s, but 70 seems to be the temperature that starts many of our fish toward the nesting spots.

Flatheads usually don't begin until the temperatures pass 75 degrees. An often-cited study conducted in Oklahoma at Carl Blackwell Lake near Stillwater showed that the bulk of flatheads spawn when water temperatures are between 75 and 80 degrees.

If you look at published information about the life cycles of catfishes, you may see references to catfish spawning in March and April or as late as late July and August. But the difference is usually one of latitude. In Gulf Coast and Southern states, catfish spawn earlier, than they do in states further north because water temperatures warm up earlier at lower latitudes.

From the Kansas border down to the Red River, Oklahoma spans only about three and a half degrees of latitude, but even that small spread is often enough for anglers to see a difference of several days in the timing of the spring spawn for some fish. Crappie, black bass and other fish besides catfish usually spawn a bit earlier in southern Oklahoma than they do up in the northern third of the state.