The Lower Illinois River, technically a part of Kerr Lake but with flowing water and lots of access, can also be a profitable place for catching all three popular catfish species. I've caught both flatheads and channel cats on lures and on various baits while I fished near the mouth of the Illinois and in the stump-filled slough that splits off just above the mouth of the river.

When you get south of the Arkansas and into the hilly and mountainous counties of Southeastern Oklahoma, the Poteau River is one of the region's prime catfish streams. The upper Kiamichi and upper Mountain Fork, as well as several of the creeks that flow into them, can hold promise for both channel and flathead catfish; on the other hand, I've never caught a blue cat from either of those places.

The Little River and the Red River at the south end of McCurtain County have long been solid catfish streams. As you travel west from there, the Kiamichi River above and below Hugo Lake can be good, especially for blues. And the Blue River and Washita and the other larger streams that flow into Lake Texoma have merit, too. Pennington Creek, around the city of Tishomingo, can also prove worthy of your attentions.

Farther north, the creeks that flow into Lake Eufaula from the south side can serve up fast catfish action, and the bigger rivers -- the North and South Canadian and Deep Fork -- are all solid catfish streams.

The streams I've mentioned are just some of the larger, more widely known streams that have fair amounts of public access. But hundreds of miles of medium-sized and small streams that can produce weighty stringers of catfish too offer very little public access. If you know a landowner whose property includes frontage on a free-flowing stream, it might be worth your while to fish there, or at least to look it over to see if there is any likely looking water.

Don't be put off just because a creek isn't large. I've caught stringers of nice-sized channel cats from little creeks that you could just about jump across. And I've caught some hefty flatheads in creeks that didn't appear large enough to hold big fish. Smaller creeks (and larger ones too) sometimes get "stocked" with adult channel cats when stocked ponds overflow during heavy rains, or when pond dams get eroded or cut.

During blackpowder season several years ago, we were hunting on a ranch on which was found a diminutive intermittent stream that flowed past our deer camp. As luck would have it, I had a spincast rod and reel and a pocket-sized box of jigs and hooks and sinkers tucked behind my pickup seat. Curious to see if anything swam the minuscule flow, I baited up with bits of hot dogs and caught six channel cats, all about 2 pounds apiece; the fish all looked like a matched set.

I was surprised to have caught so many nice catfish so quickly, but all was explained by the landowner, who told me that heavy rain had caused water to overtop the dam on one of his ponds -- a pond containing a couple of hundred channel cats about that same size -- only about three weeks earlier. (I'd have offered him his fish back -- but we'd already eaten them for supper at the camp!)