Camping is permitted on sandbars and shorelines owned or managed by the MDC and in established public and private campgrounds. Food, lodging and fuel are available in riverside towns but rarely, if ever, on the river itself. There are innumerable bait shops between Route 65 and the state’s northwest corner, but based on my own experience, many of these shops keep “banker’s hours.” Plan on making bait purchases in advance if you want to be on the river at dawn or dusk.

Channel cat numbers are good throughout the northwest quadrant’s portion of the Missouri River, but as a general rule, the fishing for channel cats continues to improve the farther upstream an angler ventures. Look for channel cats where the current slows along cutbanks, in the chutes behind islands and on shallow flats.

Flatheads are the reigning big catfish here. Twenty-pounders are relatively common, and flatheads in the 60-pound class are caught every year by both setline and rod and reel fishermen. Look for flatheads around brushpiles, behind wing dikes or other rocky structure and along current seams.

Conventional wisdom dictates that blue catfish numbers decrease in relatively direct proportion to the distance between an angler and the river’s mouth. That’s probably true, but a lot of blues weighing more than 50 pounds are taken within sight of the Kansas City skyline. In fact, the current state rod and reel record blue, a 103-pounder, was caught near Kansas City in 1991. Blue cats prefer deep water and can handle heavy currents with ease, so expect to find them in the deep scour holes off the ends of wing dikes.

The Grand River may well be the best small river in the entire state for channel cats, and it’s far from a poor choice for flatheads up to -- and sometimes exceeding -- 20 pounds. The Grand has a thriving catfish population, and 2008 should be an above-average year, owing to numerous high water episodes in 2007.

MDC access sites are strung like pearls from where the Grand River crosses the Iowa border to its confluence with the Missouri River near Brunswick. Most of these sites have boat ramps, and all of them can be used to fish from the bank. Bridge crossings can also be used to gain access to the river, but fishing from bridges is prohibited.

Wood is the key to catching Grand River cats. Provided that there’s enough water to cover their backs, channel cats treat all wood as good wood; flatheads use wood primarily for daytime cover and thus are more particular. Look for substantial logjams in the deepest water available.

South of Plattsburg in Clinton and Clay counties, Smithville Reservoir is a popular choice for big-water catfishermen in northwest Missouri. Good shad production in 2006 should make for much improved channel cat fishing in 2008. Smithville is by far the most bank-angler-friendly U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lake in the state, and its shore-angling should be good throughout the season. Channel-cat anglers should also try vertical-fishing jigs tipped with worms in the standing timber found in the upper portion of the lake.

Trotlines and juglines baited with live fish account for most of the flatheads caught at Smithville. The lake has plenty of good flathead habitat, but it also gets a lot of fishing pressure. Twenty-pounders are no problem, but very few flatheads survive the 30 or more years necessary to reach trophy status.