It seems best, too, if you catch your own shad from the same waters. One exception is below Wheeler Dam, where the bait shops sometimes sell "yellowtails." Of course, nearly everything that swims in Alabama's lakes will eat a live shad, so you might wind up with quite the mixed creel.

COFFEEVILLE RESERVOIR
Another 97-mile stretch of the Tombigbee that's the cat's meow is Coffeeville Reservoir, the 8,500 acres stretching between Demopolis and the tiny Clarke County town for which it's named. You find both channel cats and flatheads here, as well as a strong current, far fewer bass fishermen and plenty of sandbars that are ideal for beaching your boat or even setting out a lawn chair.

One of my best-ever trips involved pulling my little aluminum boat onto a sandbar following several days of rain, when run-off was boiling into the river at several points. I set up a lawn chair and cast live shiners right in the midst of the boils. It seems in retrospect as if three out of four casts resulted in a hookup with a 5- to 10-pound flathead.

This riverine stretch of the Tombigbee isn't overrun with monstrous cats, but that's made up for in sheer numbers. In fact, the river's whiskered denizens helped put Ezelle's Fish Camp on the map. The rustic Choctaw County restaurant, which sits atop a clay bluff overlooking the river, is still the best place on the planet to get Southern-fried catfish and lip-smacking hushpuppies.

The late Ronald Harwell of Siloam introduced me to Ezelle's. He used to lead a flotilla of boats from the Whitfield Landing in Sumter County all the way to the restaurant, where we'd tie up at a dock and climb the long flight of stairs to the main building. Going there and back was pretty much a daylong trip, which included time on one or more sandbars.

The Choctaw National Wildlife Refuge borders the lower portion of Coffeeville Lake. Here, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a campground just upstream of the dam. Some fishermen camp there and lock through to fish the tailrace and shoals on the downstream side of the dam. Others will jug-fish for cats up top.

Jug-fishing is one of my absolute favorite ways of filling a cooler with catfish. I always prefer to use 20-ounce soft drink bottles, but I know some boys down near Silas who still use gallon milk jugs. They're the guys who introduced me to the concept of dropping gravel inside the jugs to enable you to hear the strikes when you're fishing at night.

CHATTAHOOCHEE AND BLACK WARRIOR RIVERS
Speaking of jug-fishing: Lakes Eufaula and Bankhead might well be the only places in Alabama that have hosted either a jug-fishing tournament or a general catfishing tourney that allowed it. Of course, a person could practice the almost-lost art at any body of water -- but these two impoundments offer almost every conceivable type of catfish haunt: river and backwaters, shallow and deep.