They're usually found on a clean sand, gravel or rubble bottom with plenty of cover, such as logjams, wing dams or brush piles. They also spend much of their time in tailrace areas where there is an abundance of food. Compared to other cats, channels are not very selective. They will take live fish, dead or rotting fish, larval aquatic insects, terrestrial insects, crayfish, crabs, snails and clams. The percentage of fish in their diet generally increases as they grow older, and they normally reach the largest size in waters where fish are the mainstay.
Channel cats feed around the clock, but they're most active after sundown.
And channels almost always gorge themselves when the water starts to rise. It's possible to catch a few channels when the water temperature dips below 50 degrees, but they're not as active as blues in frigid water. In fact, flatheads rarely inhabit parts of a river with a muddy bottom and spend most of their time in pools with a sandy or gravelly bottom or in the food-rich tailwaters of dams. Flatheads are more cover-oriented than the other catfish species and are usually found around flooded timber, stumps, tangles of woody cover and even sunken barges. Flatheads prefer water temperatures in the upper 70s to low 80s and can tolerate temperatures of more than 90 degrees.