The Fort Worth-Dallas area lakes are great places to sit on the bank and cast off sloping points that have been pre-baited with soured grain, or simply fishing from the banks in the tributary creeks. After all, that's what fishing for catfish should always be about: relaxing and enjoying the moment as well as the action. However, there is another alternative that can be just as enjoyable as sitting in the shade of a tree and hoping Ol' Whiskers will take your bait, and that's drifting in a boat with earthworms or shrimp as bait under a full moon with family or friends.

Lake Benbrook at Fort Worth is one of my favorite drift-fishing spots. The flats just off the Trinity River channel near Mustang Park, as well as the old submerged gravel pits on the west side of the lake between Mercer Slough and Airplane Point, generally produce good catches of summertime channel cats for nighttime drifters. The same tactics will work on the flats near channels on many other lakes, especially on lakes Ray Hubbard, Lewisville and Joe Pool in the Metroplex, and little Lake Weatherford just west of Fort Worth.

Possum Kingdom Lake, which lies mostly in Palo Pinto County, is an excellent choice for virtually every type of catfishing. Its extremely deep lower reaches produce great catches of big blue and yellow cats on jug­lines and trotlines baited with live perch or live and cut shad. The mouths of Neely's Slough, Governor's Slough and Scenic Point typically produce the largest fish, but the ledges along the steep, rocky banks below Scenic Point also are good places to set jugs or trotlines.

Good places for rod-and-reel anglers to bait out holes with soured grain are the stumpfields around Costello Island and in Rock Creek on the far upper end of the lake.

Hubbard Creek Lake near Breckenridge in Stephens County is a virtual sleeper in catfishing circles. The lake's level remained at more than 18 feet below full pool for several years, leaving all boat ramps closed. City officials managed to get a new ramp built near the dam in the early 1990s, but fishing activity remained limited until heavy floodwaters in 2007 brought the lake back to its full capacity. Despite drought conditions over the past year, the abundance of new flooded cover and refilled creeks make this lake one to be reckoned with for bank-fishing rod-and-reelers and for trotliners, limbliners and jug-fishermen.

Big Sandy Creek is loaded with flooded willows just waiting for limb­liners, as are Brushy Creek and Hubbard Creek itself. The underwater islands below the U.S. 180 bridge are excellent places to lay trotlines, as is the boat cut at Goat Island.

Small-boat owners won't find many better places where they can catch channel cats and 5- to 10-pound flatheads than in the upper reaches of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River where the channel ranges from 15 yards to 40 yards or more wide. Although access is limited, the rewards can be great, especially following rains that give the river an increased current.