Wylie starting to spit out big flatheads

Are anglers bringing them back from High Rock?

Guide Chris Nichols has never known Lake Wylie to be a great lake for flathead catfish – at least not until this summer.

The big reservoir on the North Carolina-South Carolina border northwest of Rock Hill has always had a reputation for producing nice channel catfish. But in the past year, big blue catfish have become more commonplace. And over the past month or two, big flatheads have started to show up in anglers’ creels.

Last Saturday night, Nichols (704-868-2298) and a fisherman who accompanied him to Lake Wylie put bookend 35-pound flatheads in his boat. One of the big catfish hit a live bream; the other hit a piece of cut bream.

“The last couple of weeks, at night, the flathead fishing has really picked up,” Nichols said. “People have started to catch quite a few nice fish. Up until last year, you never heard of anybody catching big blues or flatheads on Wylie.

“There have been a lot of reports of big blues and flatheads this summer; we’ve been doing our best fishing at night.”

Nichols said the local rumor mill has catfishing going to North Carolina’s High Rock Lake to catch its vaunted flatheads, then bringing them back to Wylie and releasing them alive. That’s the best story he’s heard so far to explain the sudden appearance of trophy-sized fish.

“What we’re doing if anchoring up on points at night and fishing fairly shallow,” Nichols said. “We’re putting out about eight rods – four or five of them with live bream for flatheads and three or four with cut bait for blues. I caught three smaller fish one night about two weeks ago, then Saturday, we had the two 35-pound flatheads, and we had two more nice blues.

“Over the next couple of years, we might see Wylie come on as a big flathead lake.”