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

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.