The river at Hawley, west of Fort Phantom Hill Reservoir, is no more than a narrow draw, but it widens by several yards by the time it flows beneath the Highway 6 bridge south of Lueders. Small-boat access is available at a small unimproved campsite at the Lueders Bridge. Good catches of channel cats are made on limblines placed downstream of the bridge, and bank-fishing for yellow cats in the channel can be good using live bait.

This stretch of the Brazos River also is a perfect place to go for channel cats in a way that may be considered unusual by many avid catfish anglers -- fly-fishing.

That's right, fly-fishing with live bait, not tiny fly lures, has become very popular among a small segment of West Texas anglers in the upper Clear Fork of the Brazos River during the hot summer months, especially after preceding mild winter temperatures have resulted in high populations of grasshoppers and other insects. Fly-anglers wading the river in Jones, Shackelford and Stephens counties, as well as just northward in Haskell and Throckmorton counties, have enjoyed catching channel catfish by floating grasshoppers at the surface for years. Naturally, they've kept news of the sport close to their vests.

Swinging southeastward toward San Angelo along the triangle's border brings you to several lakes affected almost annually by drought conditions, but which never should be overlooked by catfish anglers. Among them are lakes Nasworthy, Fisher, and O.H. Ivie. And at the tip near Austin, there are a host of deep, clearwater lakes like Town, Travis and Long.

The West Texas lakes near San Angelo typically provide the best action for trotliners looking for yellow cats, or for rod-and-reel anglers fishing the creeks for eating-sized channel cats. As with anywhere else, live bait works best for the flatheads, but the so-called punch baits seem to work best for channel cats in the usually warmer, off-colored waters of West Texas.

Within the boundaries of this Texas Triangle I have presented are scores of small lakes loaded with catfish that receive little fishing pressure outside that from local anglers. To name just a few, they are lakes Coleman, Ballinger, Cisco and Hords Creek in the west, lakes Waxahachie, Bardwell, and Navarro Mills along the eastern boundary, and more southern lakes like Aquilla, Bastrop, Georgetown and Austin.

And inside this triangle are several of Texas' top catfish-producing reservoirs. Here are a few to put on your catfishing calendar:

Lake Granbury, the second in a threesome of Brazos River impoundments, shows its best action for channel cats on its upper reaches. I favor the area from Stroud Creek northward to Long Creek, Turkey Creek and Sanchez Creek above the Tin Top Bridge for trotlining.

The shallow banks below the Highway 51 bridge, an area where I used to live, also is an excellent place to set lines in 3 to 4 feet of water for channel cats during the summer months. I can't tell you how many eating-sized channel cats I've caught on 15-hook lines baited with punch bait and chicken livers along those banks after "doctoring" them with soured maize.