In clear-water streams, you'll rarely find channel cats (or other catfish, for that matter) swimming about in the open during daylight hours. I used to snorkel in a couple of gin-clear Eastern Oklahoma creeks and observed and photographed fish with my Nikonos underwater camera. The numerous channel cats I encountered were always in caves, tucked back into the shadows beneath boulders, or hidden in the shadows beneath logs or logjams.

I experimented with catching them as I watched. I'd put a baited hook on a short line dangling from the end of one of those 14-foot telescoping crappie rods. I could catch catfish back in the shadows, but I couldn't tempt them to come out into the sunlight, even a few inches, to take a bait.

It seems to me that cats in murkier water do feed in the open during daylight hours, but in those shallow, ultra-clear creeks, they were pretty reclusive while the sun was up. So if you're fishing for catfish in clear water during the daytime, make sure your bait gets close to or penetrates the fish-holding cover.

Let's look at a few of the Eastern Oklahoma streams, large and small, that might afford you some worthwhile catfish action. I've already talked a little about the Arkansas River, so I won't dwell long on it. In its undimmed stretches, like the part of the river between Tulsa and Muskogee, catfish seem to congregate in the occasional deep hole, especially wherever shorelines are rocky. Access to most of that stretch is had through private land.

Also, the tailrace areas below Kaw, Keystone, Webbers Falls and Kerr Dams can all be very productive for catfish of all three species. You'll probably need live bait -- sunfish, lively shiners or live shad -- to catch flatheads; blues and channels will readily take cut shad or fresh dead shad fished in the tailrace areas. The fishing's usually better when a turbine gate is open and providing current, but I've seen some pretty impressive stringers of catfish caught below Keystone, especially at night, when there seemed to be almost no flow coming from the dam.

Enough about the Arkansas. Let's look at some other rivers.

Over around Grand Lake, enjoyable summertime catfishing is to be had in the Spring and Elk rivers that flow into Grand from Kansas and Missouri. The Neosho River itself can be quite serviceable also, as can the Pensacola (Grand) Dam tailrace. The river and backwater around the small state park several hundred yards downstream from the dam on the Langley side of the river is often a very productive channel cat fishery. There used to be several Tulsa fishermen who fished that area frequently from float tubes, filling their stringers with channel cats by drifting night crawlers beneath bobbers along the banks near that small park.

Below Grand, Big Cabin and a couple of other creeks flowing into Lake Hudson also yield lots of catfish both to trotliners and limbliners and to rod-and-line anglers.

The Neosho River below Hudson, and again below the reregulation dam near Locust Grove, is another stream with lots of access and lots of catfish.

The Neosho is dammed to form Fort Gibson Lake, but quite a few sizable creeks flow into that lake from both sides. Flat Rock Creek, Fourteen Mile creek and others are all likely places at which to try your luck for cats.