Best catfish bait??

[swampratt]

Hard to beat the BarS dogs for pond catfish like was mentioned.
Now sometimes catfish are very picky.
Store worms may not work but ones you dug up will.
Shad gizzards are excellent for channel catfish.

I had one trip to a "creek" that fed Thunderbird lake.
Catfish were surfacing and eating things that fell into the water.
I could not get a bite and i had gizzards and cut shad, Shrimp, Worms, and liver.
4 poles out and not a bite.

I would hear a plop and then see catfish surfacing.
I finally looked up and seen what was going on.

A mulberry tree was dropping mulberries so i used mulberries for bait with a golden crappie hook.

My friend and i both got our limit in a short time all on mulberries.

I have used canned corn many times with success.

 

[Aku]

I've used grasshoppers, worms, and minnows. With varying degrees of success.

 

[turkeyrun]

I haven't had much luck with dough bait, of late.

LIVE perch, shad is best. Cut shad, perch, carp. Bar S dogs, garlic powder and a squirt of WD-40. Bar S and GRAPE or CHERRY Kool-Aid, shrimp, grasshopper, chicken liver, beef liver, and worms. All work, sometimes. Just have to figure out what the like.


Got some eel and hand size mackeral in the freezer. Can't wait to see how they work. Been watching a guy on YouTube, he catches a lot of bigger blues, exclusively on EEL.

2nd the circle hooks. I have 4/0, 5/0, 6/0, 8/0, 10/0 and 20/0.
Treble hooks do better for dough bait, chicken liver and hot dogs. #4 - #1 are my preference.

The mulberry do work, as does about "hatch" you see dropping. Have used can corn, grapes, squirrel liver, or squid.

Catfish are chicken of the sea.

 

[Oklahomabassin]

Lots of places have all you can eat catfish Fridays.

 

[KG5VW]

Bill’s Catfish Bait is all I use.
Bill’s Catfish Bait

I used to know the fella that made this stuff. I met him when I worked at the Safeway/Homeland store in Sapulpa. I lost track of him when I moved away.

 

[Almost Jack Burton]

Channelcat - 1)Chicken Liver 2)stink bait

Blue Cats- 1)fresh cut shad/skipjack 2) Other cut bait

Flathead -1) live panfish 2) live bullhead or other live fish.

 

[Familyguy]

The only problem I have with chicken livers are the damn sliders. Those turtles won’t ever let the bait sit, they are like little pond sharks. I need something that works well for cats and not turtles!

 

[Familyguy]

Sounds like I’m gonna have to go back to the hotdogs like when we were kids, people are claiming they work well so I’ll give it a try

 

[HoLeChit]

I typically only focus on flatheads, so my bait list looks like this:

Live bluegills
live shad
other live fish I can put on the hook
cut shad

Typically I will use cut shad if I’m having bad luck with flatheads and catch tons of blues and channel cats.

Otherwise, worms work pretty well. I’ve had a little luck with cheap hotdogs. Make sure you buy the cheapest ones you can find, no all beef or anything, The blends seem to do the best. I’ve caught a few on livers too. Pork livers last a lot longer on the hook, but don’t seem to catch as many.

 

[rickm]

I have always been told peanut butter works good, take a pair of panty hose and cut you a sizeable patch out of the leg and put the peanut butter in it and tye it over the hook.