Wife and I are not getting any younger, healthier or wealthier and want to check a bucket list item off. We enjoy fishing and have never went catfishing. We live 100 miles from the Red and are thinking of going there. Any suggestions on best time of the year and bait etc. Would most likely be fishing from a duck hunting boat. Looking from Grand Forks to Canada stretch.

Thanks in advance.

Right now is prime time.

Hire a guide for the day.


Then go diy.

The farther north you go the bigger the cats get..

I learned TWO things I never knew.

Got a friend that guided for cats on the Red years ago, he fished from Drayton to the boarder.

As for bait, he would use skipjack chunks off the bottom of course.

Have fished the red River for 40 years.
Just get north of Fargo and you should do fine.
I'd not wait. If we don't get good rains in the summer, it often get to low to fish.

Sat through a lecture that Fish Futures gave some of the data from all the Lake Winnipeg geotagging fish studies. This was pre covid. At the time they only had 1 year of data of the fish entering the USA Red River side, since then there is 3 more years. What was interesting was the juv. fish move to the USA to feed but the big ones stayed in Canada. Manitoba put restrictions of keeping fish and this has helped build up the population.
Best bet is to check the Master Angler list that Manitoba keeps and you will see all the entries lately. They are biting with this warm weather and the local boys say it has been good . They have a rule that ; " one beer per master angler caught " and I got a call to bring the wife to Designated driver to drive their truck home that night.
night crawlers
or sucker chunks fist size
Above the 49th you will do better at Selkirk to Lake Winnipeg

Tagged fish on the Red River for 2 years so anything goes, the flood waters are still flowing PDQ around winnipeg

It's on my bucket list as well. Good luck!

Curious about this statement. How low is too low? The river I live on gets down so low some summers I have to get out and pull the boat over shoals to get to the holes I want to catfish, but the fish are there.
What's the river depth in the shoals high summer?
It's been years since I was up that way through Pembina. The Red looked like a nice mid sized river to live close to.

In the past 3 years they have removed many of the barriers on the Red river on the USA side
During break up many sauger and catfish made it down to Fargo during high water in less than 7 days when we were tagging back in the day
If there is a tag in the fish there will be a radio transmitter inside that fish, every 10 miles of the river has a recorder to track that fish.
Many of the young fish grow in the USA side and return as adults

Buddy and I said for years that we were gonna go get a guided 8 hour day with Brad Durrick and then venture out on our own for a couple nights in my boat. He wrote the book on channel cats on the Red (literally). That never happened, because my buddy died in his early 40’s a couple years ago. Now I struggle to get someone to catfish locally, let alone take a weekend trip. If you can, do it now!!

A couple from my last trip. We boated around 250 lbs worth of cats in 2 days. Happened to be fishing the same stretch as Brad Durrick that trip. Seemed like we were doing as well or maybe even better than him on that day.

Big chunks of gumbo creek chubs are good boat this time of year. Doesn't hurt to bring a worm pole along and catch a couple goldeneye or moon eye while cat fishing for a little variety.

Definitely recommend making the time to do the trip. We put in at Grand Forks and never went more than 3 miles from the ramp.

How much do you want to spend bill? Marty has a very valid suggestion, a half day trip with Brad Derrick will cost $350 plus tip. I think to shorten the learning curve would be money well spent. I think he will go up to Drayton, that's not that far from you.

If you want to do it do it yourself, there's a boat landing at Drayton, west of hallock, and one at pembina. I'm not sure how the rules work but if you dock in North Dakota you may have to get a North Dakota license. It's always been said to further north you go on the red the bigger the average fish I don't know if it's a wise tale or not.

If you go to Drayton, there is a lot of fish caught just down from the Drayton dam, otherwise if you have electronics on your boat look for holes and fish the front side of them don't anchor in the hole anchor above it. At least that's my opinion.

I haven't fished the river for a long time, but I fish there and mostly use some form of cut bait, shrimp like you eat at home works okay.

If you have the proper documentation to get into Canada the Lockport down just north of Winnipeg might just be the best channel fishing catfish spot in the world and it's not hard to fish. There used to be a small resort there called cats on the red I don't know if it's still open or not

My guess is if you search YouTube there will be many videos of fishing catfish on the Red River of the North

Before I forget the Red River is pretty high up north, the bridge at Big Woods was closed Saturday. I'd give it a few weeks and let the water come down

Here is a good video. I'm sure the dam in the beginning is that Drayton but I could be wrong

I didn't watch the whole video. But the thing that impressed me was that the boat landing was basically empty. Our boat landings are slammed full of vehicles in the summertime especially on weekends.

The tagging has shown the smaller cats go into the states and the adults 34 inch fish stay mostly in Canada
If you look at the recent Master awards they are from the Red River Diversion gates that are south of Winnipeg since they are still diverting water into the floodway around Winnipeg
Lockport is still too fast water
Cats on the Red is still operating so is Todd Langley
Dollar exchange is 1.35 to compare priices
Big cooked shrimp and you wont go hungry
Worms and goldeye catch= large chunk bait
electonics and finding a hole = fish up stream....so knowing some geological features, ie limestone shelves is the ticket

The best catch we had when tagging was a good net set above one of those holes and 350 catfish 24 inchers in a 12 hour hoop net set. Many of those fish were caught 10 to 12 years later.

I can walk 120 steps down to the river that I live on to fish

Todd Langley runs City Cats guide services, he sponsored some trips to the Manitoba Wildlife Society and was top notch

Thanks for all the great info. Interesting stuff about the tagged fish.

We thought about using a guide but trying to keep cost down.

We fish Manitoba so we could go north. It’s only about 40 miles more to go to Selkirk than Drayton from our house. Crossing the border has been like old times the last few times we crossed so that’s not an issue.

Appreciate it all.