Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Best Bait for Catfish

Local 15 acre lake is suppose to have some big catfish in it. Whats your best bait??

Depends on what catfish specie. Flatheads? Live bream (sunfish). Some say a chunk of Ivory Soap works, I never tried it. Hot dogs, chicken livers are standards. A variety of commercial stink baits supposedly work. I doubt any of these work better than cutbait.

bait shrimp

Might try some Johnsonville Brats

Channel cats - chicken liver
Blue cats - cut bait
Flatheads - live bait

Cheese Whiz stuffed in a piece of hotdog works great around here for catfish.

catalpa worms if you can find em!

"Miss Mary" Ryan and other commercial catfishermen on the lower Alabama River used to use very stinky old cheese. Could smell it from a long way off. (Wouldn't attract me, and I love cheese.)

There's no accounting for taste � especially with catfish.

I have had luck with the mentioned baits as well as shad (live or dead), waterdogs, and nightcrawlers.

chicken liver /hearts ...or a wheate ball....or ground up "white house losers" (great stink bait).

cut bait??? sorry please be more specific

live for flatheads swimps for theothers

Always prefered cut shad or perch for channels an blues, rake the scales off and filet the whole side off with the skin on. Double it back and forth stitching it on a 6/0-8/0 circle hook on a 16" leader below a 6oz egg sinker, leave some ribs and whatnot poking out of the bait ball more natural presentation that way. If it's a really slow day and they're not biting the cut stuff put the head hooked through the eyes and the gizzard if you're using shad on your rig, seems that they'll be in the mood for one or the other kind of bait but rarely both, we used to always run a dozen rods between three of us and bait two or three with heads and gizzards until we figured out the bite.
Flatheads only eat live bait generally speaking and little panfish rule the day in this realm. Shad aren't very hardy and die pretty quick on the hook, little pumpkinseeds or bluegills, about twice the size of a silver dollar, are much tougher and will live a long time in the bait bucket and on the line. Crappie about the same size usually are the bees knees, but I've only heard this as it would be illegal with them being gamefish and all .

Make yourself a couple rod holders out of some tubing and rebar, get a reflector stand for your Coleman lantern and put a wrap of reflective tape on your rodtips. Be careful though, you might end up like I did and spend 4-5 nights a week all summer fishing until 3am.

Cats aren't native anywhere west of the Rockys but they've been introduced in a lot of waters. Idaho isn't known as a famous catfishery but we have quite a few in the middle Snake river. The state record channel is 38lb and the record flathead is 58lb. We also have blues but not too many are caught.

I prefer eating cats any day over trout. We're moving in a few weeks to an area with lots of big cats. We'll be less than 1/2 mile from the Snake River and 1 mile from a good boat dock. I'm sure looking forward to it.

think i might head up to the nueses river and catch some , haven't fished sweet water in yrs.

In a pond I like cut bait for blues and channels.....of course live perch for Ops. In a river I really like live crawfish. Partly because catfish love them but also because Gasper Gou eat crawfish almost exclusively and I like them to eat just as well as catfish.

When I used to fish a lot as a teenager, we always had the best luck with frozen bait shrimp.
If we could find live shiners or shad, they worked very well also. If not we caught perch and cut them up for bait.

And, if you don't have anything else, an Oscar Meyer weeny will work if your out of bait.

Freshly cut pieces of fish, the bloodier the better

Don't know what kind of cats we were catching but when we lived on a 35 acre lake in SE Kansas Stink Bait, that we bought at local bait shops in PB jars, blobbed onto one of those hooks with the little springy things to grab the "putty" worked like a charm. Worked on turtles too.

We have tons of channels and flatheads here. Son fishes for them religiously. He gets his best results with ivory soap or some soap he gets at Walmart that's from Mexico. It supposedly is 2/3'rds rendered beef fat. Starts with a "Z"....think it's "Zote" soap or something like that.

Goldfish work great for flatheads, but they are supposedly illegal and I know our son would never do anything like that.

Surprised someone has not mentioned deer liver for channels! Stays on the hook way way better than chicken liver and just as bloody. We keep the deer livers from a few deer each year, stick em in the freezer and use em when needed.

Shad, cut shad, Shad guts


You're welcome

This. Also, minnows will catch any of them.

Cubed Cantor?

Because of the possibility of introducing something we don't want, Idaho prohibits using live fish for bait along with stuff like leeches, frogs, & shrimp. An exception is crayfish and only if caught in the water where you're fishing.

As mentioned previously catalpa worms are good. One thing I used to do was to take a kitchen match..(if people still know what those are..or maybe..were) push it through the worm and turn it inside out. Lets the juices flow.

we fish the palmunkey river near richmond va. last week for 2 days and came home with 40lb of fillets. we use cut eel. we buy them live at the bait shop . they are about a foot long,cut the in 1in chunks. they almost impossible to pull off a hook. some use shrimp,clam snouts,cut perch,herring,shad. any kind of fresh fish works really well. catch what ever is available and cut into chunks. use cicle hooks and they will hardly ever get off the hook.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep..... and Catalpa skins are tough enough to withstand being chewed on by quite a few fish.... I do however like fishing with cheese dogs or cheddar brats..... raw of course..

Catalpa worms.

You can also take a wad of chsitty terlot paper and cinch it up into some panty hose

Mmmmm, and fish below the WWTP outfall

Zote is right on soap... or homemade bait soap, with Anise if possible for channels

Amazed no one mentioned, that I saw, regular old worms, use em all the time. And any grasshopper but the green ones seem not as good as regular grasshoppers.

Best by far for channels are helgramites

We always use O'ROYS dog food chunks for our trot lines and have always had good luck with it.

On a side note, I don't know how many channel cats I've caught with Ivory soap, but that was always on bush hooks and trotlines.

We had a piece of piano wire strung between 2 nails in an old stump that we used to shave pieces off the bar with.

^

If you wanna use soap, Zote is the ticket.

I think I have used Zote before. It's been awhile. I think we used that some on the Chattahoochee.

Should add that soap worked better in the rivers.

My grandfather fished for Channel cats for decades. His bait of choice was rotten nasty smelling liver.

I have also taken the first bluegill or bream I catch and hack em up. Seen channel cats chasing sunfish before as I reeled em in while strictly panfishing.

Made me think, hmmmm I guess I could try this yet. It worked.

You use to be able to buy a gallon of blood($1) at the local slaughter house for cat fish bait. Cut squares of cotton cloth, put a glob of blood on it, fold the ends and tie with string, ready to fish.

Some would "cook" the blood to make it firm enough to stay on the hook. Probably how many commercial cat fish baits are made today.

Aficionados of catalpa worms might enjoy this article:
CATALPA WORMS

Here in South Louisiana we use Beef Heart cut in small chunks, works well - get it from wal-mart

Small Crawfish is great also

cut fish is good too!

I didn't read the whole thread for responses, so forgive me if this is redundant.

#1. Live minnows

#2. Raw shrimp

I grew up in Ca and we used to spend a week at Clear Lake on summer vacation and fish for bass, crappie and catfish. The bait of choice for cats was shelled crawdad tails.

Used to fish for cats in the Delta and the bait of choice there was clams.

In Southern Ca at Big Bear Lake if you were fishing for cats near the boat ramp trout guts worked exceptionally well.

In Northern Ca at Shasta Lake strips of filleted bluegill would catch cats and if you knew where and when (I didn't) it was possible to catch a sturgeon.

Grasshoppers! Yup Jeff, them big green ones!! And hellgrammites always worked good on our end of the Colorado to on channel cats.

Used a big sucker or a perch to get them big yellow cats!

I've caught more big, 50-70 lb flatheads on fillet of herring shad than anything else.

I jug fish and often have a lot of live bait as well on my 70 or so jugs. I always get the big flatheads of the shad fillets.

I use Sonnys catfish dip bait with rubber worms. Raw shrimp. And when back in Idaho small rainbow trout (mortality) from the local hatcheries.

Strawberry chicken. Buy skinless boneless breast and cut them into desired chunks put them in a freezer bag and sprinkle a pack of sugar free strawberry Jello, mix it up good put it in the freezer and take it out the night before your going to use it.

On the small river near where I grew up, our go to bait for channels was always chicken guts. Grampa would get a 5 gallon bucket of them from a local butcher (I think, he never would divulge where he actually got them ). He would then separate and "strip" them of the connective tissue, put them in bags and freeze for use throughout the summer. If we were fishing in the near future, he would put them in quart size Mason jars and refrigerate. Immediate use meant they sat in the jar on the picnic table for at least overnight. Putting the guts on a hook was a special method, too long to explain here, but easy to do once you were showed how - not just globbed on the hook. If grampa wasn't having any immediate luck catching kitties, he'd reach in the jar for a liver and put it on the hook as well . . . he called that putting on a "bomb". Never saw anyone with the ability to catch catfish like gramps. Funny thing was he didn't like to eat fish, so always gave them away.

Blues and flatheads seem to prefer cut or live bait but channel cats are not as persnickety. I have always heard that if it floats, sinks, stinks or swims, channels will eat it.

As Take a Knee noted, it depends on the species.

Channel cats: chicken liver, hot dogs, rotten meat, cheeseball, dead fish, etc.

Flathead cats: live bream (sunfish)

Blue cats: fresh cut shad (herring)

There used to be bait soap for cats that worked better than Zote. At least for us, but I have not seen it in a long time. Came in thin bars wrapped in paper, just like the thin bars I used to make.

I need to see if you can even buy Lye anymore and make some soap again, home made with anise seed and oil of anise was like a miracle bait at times.

But on the river here it depends on times.. sometimes they go soap, sometimes grasshoppers. Even June bugs at times. Sometimes red wigglers, and sometimes nightcrawlers. Sometimes only one of the above will work...
But helgramites have worked every last time, or they were not biting, like they can do around August at times...

Yellows we've caught only with live bait. And we've used about anything legal. Mudcats are good too but goggle eyes have been best, as long as the gar are not bad. They don't mess with the mudcats as much as with perch.

Largest yellow I"ve seen, was 62 IIRC< and it had in its belly....... an opposum...I don' think you can get bait too large for them.

We've fished with 5-10 gaspers before.... but I guess never in the right time or place, though we've had some 4-5 pound channels on lines swallowed up to the fins....

This is interesting. We started using circle hooks years back, and caught almost nothing. Went back to Oshaugnessy and found they hadn't quit biting, just we started catching again.

On eels, never thought to use as bait, but know if you catch one, there isn't going to be anything else biting. For some reason.

"There used to be bait soap for cats that worked better than Zote."

Jeff, I think it was called J & B Brand soap. Used to by it at the old grocery store in Bastrop..

Peeled shrimp or peeled crayfish.

Salt Pork works pretty good too, tough pig skin stays on the hook, cats like the salty taste can be enhanced with scents.

We used to pop a jack rabbit or mudhen & use the intestines, stays on the hook pretty well, no need for added scent.

A set of tanks, flips, respirator, light and spear gun.

Gunner

I use circle hooks quite a lot.

My brother and I have found that bullheads are best. The bigger the better. 10-14" ones catch big flatheads.
AB

Me too.

I know folks who'll put a live smallmouth bass on a hook when they're going after the big flatheads. They're pretty hardcore, though.

Premo Catfish Dip Bait and surgical tube worms work magic on channel cats and the occasional blue.

I like it because the tub of bait lasts a long time and you never get robbed by smaller fish. Fresh cut bait works awesome but I catch too many gar and turtles. Worms or liver get cleaned off by eels and panfish.

With the stink bait I catch only catfish with the occasional snapping turtle.

Here's a resource for you. It has a geographical section so go to your area for specific information. It's a real treasure trove of experience-based information.

United States Catfish Association

PS: If Vic_in_Va chimes in, listen up. He's a hard-core catfisherman who goes after those whopper blues.

yep,they use strawberry chicken sometimes here in va.we caught some nice cats last year on it. we never catch any big ones where we fish. but we go after eating size fish. the locals use live eels 12-16in to catch rock fish when they run up the palmunkey to spawn in april. they say on cats use monster hooks and big bait to catch bigger fish. one of them bro's caught a 59lber the day before went. i saw a pic on his phone.

I dunno but I might even like to try some of that deep-fried up myself..... Sounds kinda good. Mebbe even some orange jello.....

All that soap/jello/cheese/liver/guts/blood/oil-of-olay special mixture stuff is for channel cats. For flatheads and blues you need live bait and cut bait, respectively.

So we got 12/0 circles, SS, and put em on our stagings for whatever type line we were going to set... I know we never caught a single yellow on the circles....

Got any ideas?

Normally fish 9/0 SS Oshaugnessy... those get bent up less and less often than the 7/0

Crappy heads/ 12/0 mustard circle bent offset by hand and and sharpened

We sharpened. And wondered about offset, looked like the way a flatheads mouth is, not offset sure might not snag anything...

I use these.



Cut up like this:



To catch these.






I am blessed in the fact that I live about 3.42587 minutes from the James river, one of the best Blue cat fisheries on the east coast.

Frickin' A! What's the weight on those things?

And I assume the stuff in the bucket is fresh shad that you caught yourself?

Live crawfish.

Raw bacon. They can't strip it off the hook as easily as, say a shrimp, plus its salty, cheap, and easily available.

srp

Top fish went mid-50s, bottom one is low 60s

Correct on the shad, Gizzard shad to be exact. We use a gill net for them.

I don't have many pictures of me holding fish, to give an idea of scale. 90% of the time I'm out there by myself.

Curious as to why sugar free. miles

How does the soaps stay on the hook. Glad I posted this, lots of great info. Thanks to everyone!

That's for snappers and groupers.

Best bait for blue cat is carp chopped in 2 in. chunks.

Live perch for yellow cat or fajita meat soaked in chopped garlic.

Chicken, squirrel or rabbit guts for channel cat.

And big damn cats over in Lake Ouachita. lol

Gunner

Best eva was sun fermented chicken guts. Sometimes smeared with Limburger.

Cotton seed cake.

there are cats alot bigger then 60lbs in the james. friend of mine caught a 78lber a few years ago.

That was always the problem with soap. It was hard to keep on a hook.

We would keep soap on the hooks until the next time we ran the lines, 12 hours or so give or take, that was long enough.

We could never get it to last that long. Personally I don't think dad was puttin' it on right. But I sure as he** wasn't gonna say anything. He fished that river looooong before my time! LOL! When it did stay it caught nice channels. Then again it may just have been the way the soap was.

He had a grasshopper box made out of an old dynamite box. We'd go out in the salt cedars with a Coleman lantern after dark, and catch grasshoppers. We seines bait too. We hardly ever spent money on bait. Except when he bought the soap.

My neighbor here was a real river rat. Spent all his time on the river. It was always hellgrammites for channels and perch for yellow cats with him. And he would drag home the fish. In my pre-marriage days he kept me from starving! LOL seems I'd tend to always show up at their house about grocery time!

Them folks are long gone. I miss em.

Why do you city slickers use a kitchen match to turn catalpa worms inside out? Dang...we just bite the head off and you can then use the hook to turn em inside out while hooking them.

I'm a refined redneck though...I spit the head out and don't swallow.

This is the stuff for any catfish but flatheads. If you have Mexicans araound, you have Zote.

http://www.zote.com.mx/english/about.htm

I remember reading in one of the Spanish priest's journals from the 1680's along the Rio Grande, that there was this one Indian neophyte who would always bring him a piltote, their word for a yellow cat. He stated it would be tied by the head to the saddle pommel, and tail would be dragging on the ground.

My biggest is in the 80s. There have been a few "triple-digits" caught.

blues on trot lines Asian carp cutt bait ,perch for flatheads bank poles Missouri river,channels any thing will work.

Well if you ever want an official photographer I�d also pay for your gas and food.

In any case, congrats, that�s really impressive.

4 or 5 cans of Kennel Ration dumped into a burlap sack with a brick in it. Tie the top closed with a piece of rope long enough to reach the top of the water from the bottom of the lake. tie a 1 gallon milk container to the other end of the rope & toss it into the lake. wait a few hours until the catfish start pushing on the sack to get at the dog food. toss your line where the milk container marks the spot. put a little peanut butter on a hook and you have an endless supply of catfish.

Possibly a difference in water? We always fished backwater eddy edges for channels on top, and the water flow was never much. Only pushed it far enough on to cover the barb, but not split or crack the soap.
If they didn't bite there was usually a dab of it left the next time we checked lines.

We had grasshopper boxes and did the same, but not out of old dynamite boxes... just plywood and wire mesh. Double layer of inner tube on top lapped over each other so you could snag, stick your hand down in, flip em off, and pull hand back through without loosing em.

Seined a lot over the yeras too. Unfortunately now the Colorado has so much moss etc.. you can't even seine for helgramites hardly. Way too much moss in the net to find them. That sucks.

But there are a bazillion shad down here now which we used to not have so many of. Times change.

We've bought soap, but I really enjoyed making my own, but have not done it for years now.

Getting time to fish the last years has been the main issue, and as such haven't caught anything more than a 54 about 5 years back, and only went once this year for a 15 and a 12 pound yellow.

Did you read the link? Says made with Citronella oil. IIRC thats same as in some mild bug repellants.
HMMMM Wash outdoor clothes in it and see?

I don't think I"ve seen it here, but we have a mexican lineman that gets it for us when he goes back down south...I might have to look harder at HEB or Walmart though...

Anyone have a clue if my guess re repellant properties might be right? Even if it keeps the gnats at bay a bit better would be nice.

That sounds like a lot of fun, espcially for high-volume fishing action with kids.

Growing up a farmer down the road had a farm pond filled with channel cats he raised for sale.He let me catch some a few times a year,when they were reacy to net foe sal. he fed them pelleted fish food and the best way to catch the was to scrape the paint off a popping bug and throw it in with a handful of feed. 8 pound cat on a flyrod fun funfun

Back when I was in college I had an aquarium. I bought a couple 3" blue cats at the pet store. When I was moving I asked my sister in law if I could put them in their large tank until I got mine setup. They agreed. The very first night they ate half their fish. Oops!

Similar we sour maize in a bucket. Take it out by rocks on the lake in the morning, dole it out wiht a scoop and start fishing right away. Doesn't take them long to smell and start feeding. Usually fill a cooler half full fairly quickly. Worms on a hook under a small bobber...

put the shank in a vice bend with a big set of klein's 3/8.
Important-sharpen and re-sharpen

If it had been a flathead it would have eaten all of them.