One of Clayton Randall's favorite ways to spend a summer night is to anchor in the middle of the Salt River end of Roosevelt Lake, drink a few beers and wait for a big catfish to bite. Flatheads are his favorites.

All you need to join him is stout tackle, the right bait, and a lot of patience. A good friend or two helps Randall's patience -- but bring your own beer.

One of his frequent fishing buddies is Critter Despain. Together, they are a tough team to beat if catfish are what you're after.

Whenever Randall goes out for catfish, he prepares to spend a good part of the night on the water. Citronella candles in big jars or cans flicker on the console of his boat to keep the "skeeters" away, and he lays in a good supply of brew and snacks. A catfish fisherman, after all, needs to keep his strength up. Randall has boated flatheads up to 71 pounds, and that takes muscle.

Flatheads are solitary and territorial and like to ambush their prey. "I think the big flatheads go out into deeper water during the day, then move in shallow at night to feed. A really big fish is king of the territory, and he'll pretty much keep smaller flatheads out of his water," says Randall. He fishes anywhere from 10 to 45 feet deep, but at night he usually tends to stay on the shallow end of that range.

No matter how good he thinks the spot is, if somebody downstream is making a lot of noise, Randall moves. Catfish are spooked easily, he says, and noise repels them. Also, if anything is blocking their path to the shallows, even just a noisy boat of party animals, they won't pass.

If the boss flathead gets removed, another big cat will move in relatively quickly, so a good spot generally stays good. An ideal spot for catfish has all the attributes that make for a good feeding ground: cover of some sort such as brush piles, logjams or rocks, along a creek channel or a long point.

Randall most often finds the big ones near cover, in deeper, slower-moving pools of the rivers feeding Lake Roosevelt. Flatheads spawn in spring or early summer, building nests in caves, depressions under rocks, or under undercut banks. One or both parents will stick around to take care of the fry, so the fish are often very shallow at that time of year.

Flatheads are hunters, so live bait is a must. Randall catches 3- to 6-inch baitfish, usually small sunfish, to use as bait. You can also use big waterdogs for flatheads. Outsized channel cats will also eat these baits, but anglers pursuing them usually use minnows, worms or bass tackle. Randall says that young flatheads eat bugs and crawdads, and switch to fish when they get older.