Wild fish learn and respond also. I want to talk mostly about stream-fishing here -- but I'll tell one quick story about a pond just to illustrate how catfish can adapt to altered circumstances. I used to have access to a catfish/bass pond that was loaded with channel cats in the 8- to 12-pound range. Although I rarely kept more than a single fish to eat, it wasn't unusual to catch several 10-pounders in an hour or two of fishing.

I'd always start by throwing out a coffee can's worth of pellet food in the area that I was going to place my baited lines in. That drew the fish in from all over the acre-plus-sized pond. One day I took a couple of youngsters to the pond to fish. It had been raining throughout the night, and was still at it that morning. A small intermittent stream that flowed into the pond was running muddily that morning.

We fished in the usual places, but couldn't seem to buy a bite from a catfish. I had both night crawlers and bait shrimp, and we caught a nice 5-pound bass on one of the night crawlers, but even though I scattered a couple of cans of food on the water, I elicited no reaction from the cats.

In walking around the pond, I had to pass through the small stream that was flowing into it. As I did, I saw a small crawfish scoot away in the edge of the murky water, and it dawned on me that the stream might be washing crawfish or other foods into the pond. When I got back, the two boys and I gathered up our tackle and bait and moved around the pond to the point at which the stream entered.

As soon as we threw our baited lines into the water we started catching catfish. Sometimes the bait barely had time to sink below the surface before it was grabbed Most of the catfish had abandoned their usual hangouts to congregate right where water freighted with food was running into their home.

River catfish do the same: They learn -- places into which currents bring food, or in which they can hide from currents; the consequences of river flows increasing or decreasing around bottom and shoreline structure and around islands, wing dams, logjams and other objects.

When flows on the Arkansas River are medium to high, I've caught limits of blue cats by anchoring my boat immediately downstream from a mid-river island and placing my baited lines just at the edge of the calm water pocket below the island. Catfish seem to stage along that edge, waiting for the current to push something edible past them, or for food to swirl out of the current into the calmer water at the edge of the island's "current shadow."

In the Mountain Fork River down in McCurtain County, and in a couple of small clear-water creeks in northeastern Oklahoma, I've caught channel cats while wading or float-tubing and drifting night crawlers or grasshoppers directly into logjams or brushpiles with the current. When fishing in this manner, you have to be careful that you don't let your bait drift too far into the pile of tree trunks and branches, because you may not be able to get it back out. The good news is that channel cats lying in wait in the logjams often grab the bait in the first second or two after it enters the cover, so you often don't have to drift the bait very far into the tangle.