"The fish have preferred areas they'll hole up in, but overall, they're moving around the river, too. If I stay in a good place long enough, it will usually produce good action. Sometimes that action will start right after the lines are set out, sometimes I may have to wait a while. But moving is an option if I don't get any fish action after a couple of hours. But now that I've learned some good places, getting plenty of catfish bites is usually not a problem. Many nights I end up in the same place I start," he said.

You don't have to go far down the river to catch big catfish in the winter as Bernard does. Mike Bernard prefers this downriver area because it is not far from his home; he catches plenty of big catfish and he is able to avoid much of the boat traffic. However, big catfish are found all along the Cooper River below Lake Moultrie. And you can catch them, plenty of them, in cold weather.

While this is the newest cold-weather catfish hotspot I've been clued in on, the first one I sampled many years ago still ranks at the top of the productivity list. Moreover, you can hook up with big catfish there as well.

My first sample of wintertime catfish on lakes Marion and Moultrie was with professional guide Gus Woodham about 20 years ago. Cold-weather catfishing did take me by surprise then, but it didn't take but one trip to convince me I'd been missing something special.

I remember my first conversation regarding catfish with Gus.

"Go catfishing with me tomorrow and I'll literally work you to death catching fish," was the promise from Woodham.

"Son, you're on," I replied. Actually, I had met Gus before and I knew he would almost certainly be able to back up his promise. One reason was that a couple of days earlier, I had seen him unload a catch of over 100 catfish caught in less than five hours near the Wilson Dam right in front of Randolph's Landing.

The reason the action can be so great here and in places like the Cooper River is that catfish are voracious feeders. Their reputation for chowing down on a large variety of baits is well established among anglers familiar with them. Even when the water temperature dips into the 40s in the Southern states, catfish still have the need to forage. But their feeding habits are somewhat restricted since they are not as active during colder weather.

The blue catfish in particular exhibits a trait that makes it very susceptible to anglers in the Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie area during the coldest months of the year.

This trait is their affinity for threadfin shad.

During the cold months, the threadfin mass into huge schools and are easy prey for the foraging blues that usually travel in very large schools. When the blues move in on a school of shad, they do so for one reason: to feed. If an angler happens to be in the same spot at the same time and knows what to do, he can literally catch all the fish he wants.