Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Best catfish bait

Love the discussion's on best catfish bait! Sometime's I think the talk should be about what a catfish won't eat! Saw a video of a guy using McDonalds french fries to catch them! My catfish experience is a bit slim but here's what I use. Started trying chicken liver for bullheads. Couldn't keep the stuff on my hook and cast at the same time. Went to beef liver and could cast far as I could without losing the bait and it caught fish. Tried some of that stuff you get at the Walmart, dough balls, and never got a thing on it. Went to targeting channels just this year and got on a catfish site to figure it out. Seem's the channel and the bull head have something in common, they eat anything! But fooling around I started trying chicken breast in a goop of olive oil, bit of water, bunch of garlic powder and package of strawberry kool aide. Strawberry kool aid for some reason was very hard to find but I did find strawberry jam and swapped it in and guess what? It worked very well. Well wasn't in the formular I read about but I did find some strawberry chrystal light and tried it, it worked fine. Then happened on the real deal, strawberry kool aide and tried it. Turned the chicken breast really red and it also worked. I have tried night crawler's and my son prefers them, and, they work. On the catfish forum I'm on there are more baits people swear by than you can count but, for big catfish the opinion seem's to be use cut bait! I put the head from a small mouth on a hook for a kid here the other night and he got hung up with it and broke his line. Brought the rod to me and there was no line on it. He got spooled! Another couple thing's one is Morman cricket's seem to work great, son tried them and they did fine! And lot of talk about crappie guts. Son caught a squaw fish about a week ago and cut the gut's out and tried them. Got himself a nice 18" catfish! I am almost to the point where I think paying for catfish bait is foolish. Just scrape up some road kill and go for it! For myself I'm gonna stick to beef liver when I can find it and chicken breast. One thing about the chicken breast is it seem's after a couple days or so fermenting in that stuff, it doesn't work as well as fresh. Think I'm gonna go back to chrystal light to, easier to find and not as hard on the eyes, and have had to much luck on beef liver with bullheads over the years but seem's hard to find anymore. Guy here in town has one he's giving me and has an elk liver to try also. Should work I'd guess. Catfish is more likely to find elk liver in the river than chrystal light!