Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Best catfish bait

Well?

Shad.

I like SSS stink bait for channel cats and cut shad for blues and live what ever for flatheads.

Creek Chubs work for me.

What kind of water you fishing?

freshly cut bluegills

Lakes and ponds in VA.

Take some seafood Pate' style catfood, and mix in some crushed Wheaties until it makes a stiff paste that doesn't stick to your hands. Be sure to get all of the oil out of the can! Form a ball of it big enough to encase your hook and throw it in. Then throw a few more around the area where your bait is. It's cheap, and you will slay them with it.

Worms or liver always worked pretty good for me in ponds.

Cut shad or some kind of cut bait would probably be good in lakes too.

Fishing Cape Cod we used clam bellies for cod and haddock.
I thought they would be great to catfish. Tough and grisly, they
put off an oil cloud when they hit the water. If they are a bait of choice for bottom dwelling, scent feeding salt water fish, I bet catfish would love them.

Of course, somebody would,
let them rot first,
Add garlic,
Or Cool Aid.

Maybe, anise.

I should have bought a vac sealer Pac to try.
But knew I couldn't source them here, so It didn't matter much.

For channel cat in ponds/lakes Sonny's dip bait works well for me.

Catalpa worms...

Blues and flatheads like fresh shad. Live bluegills and goldfish sometimes.

Channel cats will eat just about anything. liver, chicken, stink bait, blood bait, hotdogs, worms, cheetoes, soap, you name it.
strawberry koolaid, garlic powder, and vanilla extract make good attractants to add to any of the above.

First mention of hot dogs which seems to be a popular bait here in Va. I'm new to this, but I want to get good at it. When I was a kid, 40 years ago, fishing channel cats a few times in small rivers and lakes in upstate New York, we used dead minnows, the stinky-er the better it seemed. But that was in a place long ago and far away from where I am now. I'm a catfish rookie.

Thanks for all the responses.

Keep them coming.

In my experience the tales of catfish loving rotten, festering, stinking stuff are nonsense. Sometimes stinkbaits work on channels, but IME if they’re biting great on it they’ll usually bite other stuff too. I do know that they don’t prefer sour or rotten or even day old cut bait.

Frozen shad and perch are almost as bad as no bait at all. I find the best bait to be cut shad caught in the body of water I’m fishing and cut while they’re still alive and used immediately. Some times of the year perch work as good as shad, even moreso when the shad aren’t on the bank and you can’t catch any. For flatheads perch will stay alive on the hook much longer than shad and are also tougher which makes them harder to tear the hook out of on the cast. I hear that skipjack are the ultimate catfish bait but we don’t have them here.

A 4’ throw net will more than pay for itself if you learn to use it, you’ll have a much better chance of getting fresh bait every time you hit the water. We begin every catfish trip by trying to catch bait, if we can’t get any bait we’ll go home. If the shad aren’t on the bank and I don’t want to mess with the boat we’ll go to one of our ponds and catch 8-10 little perch between 2”-5” long. Usually catch them on a jigging rod with a tiny piece of night crawler on a cricket hook, toss them in a 5gal bucket with a little battery aerator.

I guess that’s the long way of saying that you’ll catch more fish if you make the effort to use fresh bait.

On the TN River, Skipjack is king. I use cut white bass, crappie heads after filleting, shad, and fur or live bluegill as a last resort. Fresh is way better than frozen, but sometimes frozen has to work.

I tried fresh bluegills in TN and it works OK. My first year here went fishing with a guide and he used boneless skinless chicken breasts with all the fat trimmed off. In the 4 years since I have not found anything that works any better. Bluegill chunks tends to stay on the hook better and is denser so it sinks to the bottom faster. But chicken breast is king.

For small channel cats in summer, stink bait is best for me. I get a lot of small channels then. As for flatheads, good live bait . Bullheads are very hard to beat. Small channel cats work well too. I like a 10" channel cat that is feisty.

Never tried it, those dead little sparrows that fall from the nest?

Hot dogs is good, because the binder leaks out.

Grilled brats is better, because the oil floats up towards the surface, and the fish will follow it down.

But for the big ones, nothing beats cut shad or bluegill.

I have used cheap hot dogs w squirt of garlic juice w good results. Live shad is best if you can net them. As pricey as goldfish are they really produce. I’ve used them on my noodle jugs and have nearly always caught old whiskers.

Gold fish? Never would have thought to use them but makes sense

I always thought that shrimp worked pretty well.

For smaller lakes and ponds I always liked hotdogs or liver. Catalpa worms or helgamites if you can find them. The problem with liver is you'll probably catch a fair amount of snapping turtles but those better eating than catfish IMO.

For big cats, especially flatheads and blues, bluegill.

You don't want to get caught with goldfish here.
$120 fine. Plus$20+/fish.

They don't want them to get loose and breed.

Chicken tits soaked in red koolaid powder

Hotdogs have always worked pretty well for me. Also the cheap frozen shrimp you buy at the grocery store.

Pa pow!

Here on the James, live bluegill will slay Flatheads in the upper portion of the tidal James.

Downriver, or at least twice a day it's downriver, fully grown Gizzard Shad cut up in big pieces worked for the big blues. I cut a full size shad into 4 pieces and use an 8/0 hook

Bloody deer meat

We sometimes used rabbit guts for stock tank catfish. Shoot a rabbit with CCI Stingers. Instant fish bait.

Jumbo grasshoppers worked more than once when we could catch them 🤠

Small local fish.... like bluegill shad perch....
I have caught some big ones using live/dying bait.....

Freshly cut or small ones alive.

Hard to beat nightcrawlers for all around catfishing.

Hot dogs always seemed to work well for smaller catfish in still water.

Always used big nightcrawlers for Channel cats.

^ ^ ^ ^ THIS ^ ^ ^ ^

Beef blood bait we used to make works
really great for a trotline or for juglines
It'll sling right off the hook if you try to
cast it

Do you guys cut the bluegill any special way?

I do them the same as I do shad. Stick them in the brain box with my bait knife so they quit flopping. Rake their scales off so they don’t foul the hook point. Cut them into chunks from the top down, generally about 1/2” cuts but I leave a good bit on behind the head to have for one big bait. I always cut the tail off and toss it too, maybe superstition or maybe real but I never fish tails, old guy told me they weren’t good bait and I just went with it.

Hard to beat ‘Tauga worms.

I’d rather fish the, than any other bait. Plus, bream and bass will eat the, also.


Lately hard to find. Last year my trees didn’t have worms. So far, none this year.

Catalpas are the trees with the big green beans hanging down, correct? I know of a creek that has several big ones if that’s the case but I’ve never noticed any worms. They caterpillars or something else?

That’s them.

Big broad leaf.

Usually find them on sandy creek banks.

Worm, actually a caterpillar.

Got to get them before they go into the ground. Or birds.

Rain crows like them.


Dynamite fish bait.

Chicken livers stored in garlic salt.

You'll thank me....

Chicken livers stored in garlic salt.

You'll thank me....

Treble hooks?

Liver works good. Throws off easy.

I’ve even soaked them in jello hoping to make them tougher.

Live lining white perch with a 5/0-7/0 circle hook in their back can’t be beat at least in our waters. If a catfish doesn’t take it a rockfish certainly will. Win win.

" Shameless Pets " Lobster Roll over flavor dog treats soft baked. Couple bags of these and you`re good to go for all the catfish you want to cart home.

I pulled 5 of these out of my pond today and cut them up in roughly 2 inch chunks. Scaled them and cut the splines off. Going to give it a go next catfishing trip. Even saved the heads.

I do the same thing but keep em whole, vacuum sealed in the freezer.

Went yeasterday morning to float a local creek.

Bass fish on the way down. Stop at a few deep holes to catfish.

Caught a mess of catfish.

Canadian night crawlers on bottom. Love circle hooks.

Kept hoping to find some catagga worms. All the trees on the creek banks were full of leaves.


Seems we don’t have the worms around lately. Maybe the moths sided off?

Try wrapping a small square of cheesecloth tight around a chicken liver if
you cast them. I have pondered doing this, hooking them, them freezing them
in an old ice cube tray. Could attach with a snap swivel and avoid touching them.

Hate to be a pussy, but on an all nighter, I don't like eating a Sammie and
smelling livers. It's almost as bad as eating one in deer season,
and realizing the morning
dump got on your trigger finger!

Depends on the game. Scavengers seem to like fresh (emphasis fresh) chicken livers, fried chicken, and live minnow. Hunters like flathead tend to like them alive. I am convinced that some sort of oil scent helps- anchovy, fried chicken, or krill... not much though, just enough to draw initial interest. Live bait always works best.

Yep, home made blood bait. Use some salt or brown sugar to dry it out and make a tougher rind on the outside, it will hold a hook better then. Take it out of the freezer just long enough for it to soften and take the hook.

Right ^ ^ ^
Salt and sugar both is part of what my grandpa
taught me to use, but it's still relatively fragile for
casting.
You'd buy the big bucket of blood at the slaughterhouse
and it'd be a big clot and you cut it up into cubes and
cover it all with salt and sugar, and put it back in the
bucket and you pour off the liquid everyday, etc.
This isn't refrigerated the way we did it.
Keeping it nearly frozen wasn't practical for the way
we fished.

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!

Where are you that people fish for bullheads on purpose Don? I’ve never known anyone who intentionally fished for bullheads.

I do know guys who use bullheads for bait on jugs and trot lines. Catch monster flatheads on them or so they claim.