Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: osage outlaw on June 13, 2012, 09:11:07 pm
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I'm going to be spending next week at my inlaws lake cabin and I need some catfish bait ideas. We usually use chicken liver and nightcrawlers. Somebody told me to use soak hotdogs in garlic powder and cherry koolaid. Does anyone have any good recipes for some home made bait?
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I leave the chicken livers out in the sun for a couple of days til they start to rot. Its a nasty stinking mess, but the catfish love it.
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Best catfishing days I ever had was using grasshoppers although usually a little later in the summer. Also had good luck with pork liver that was left out to ripen. It's tougher skinned and stays on the hook without having to wrap.
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I used to take the airgun to a pond and shoot small frogs. Let them ripen a day and they work great. Go another day or 2 and they won't stay on the hook worth a hoot.
George
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I spent a lifetime chasing those things around up here. They are my fav-o-right fish to catch. I have my best luck using bite size chunks of whole frozen shrimp. I have tried it all and that works best up yonder on all the lakes and rivers I have fished. Even the Great Lakes. I never did much up here with stinky stuff. Our channels prefer fresh bait competely. Sliced up bluegills work almost as good as fresh shrimp. I use a baiting needle to thread my 30# leader through my bait so my circle hook is right at the bottom of the bait, then loop it off and use a snap swivel to attach it to my main line and a 1/2 oz egg and bead.
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I agree with pearl,,shrimp,cut fresh fish work well here,,cheese filled hotdogs work to. Good luck!
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Get yourself some of that soft velveta cheese, and some cotton balls. pull the cotton balls apart until they are loose and smash the cheese into the fibers and create a ball of cotton fiber and cheese. The cotton keeps the cheese on the hook. make a whole stash of them, put them in a tupperware or something and keep them chilled in the beer cooler. Get yourself a cheap can of sweet corn and drain it. Put a ball of cheesey cotton on a single hook and cover the tip and barb w/ a piece of sweet corn. This is all that works in the pay lakes around here. I stole this from a buddy, so lets keep it between you and me. ;) good luck Buddy, dpg
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Ditto on the frogs and shrimp. Frogs can really stay on the hook well, too. A friend of mine racked up 11 'cats on the same frog one night. Mind you, towards the end he was stirching parts together with a smaller hook and some light monofilament.
Up here in South Dakota the channel cats are much more finicky, they rarely lower themselves to a stinky bait, preferring the fresher shrimp. (50-60 shrimp to the pound are about the right size)
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I try to catch a small catfish and use it for cut bait. Don't scoff it works really well. Ron
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I use shrimp or squid. The squid stays on the hook good.
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Down here cut shad or perch works well. I had about a quart of snake eggs I harvested from my last snake skinning. I put them in a gallan bag with corn meal and coated the eggs well with the corn meal. It's in the freezer until I can try it out as bait.
Cipriano
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I try to catch a small catfish and use it for cut bait. Don't scoff it works really well. Ron
Bullheads are as good as it gets for flatheads up here. They are tough and dont stop moving all night.
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A-1 on the bullheads for flatheads. OR little carp. For channel cats cut bait or dead minnows is tops. Cut bait of carp or sunfish if they are not game fish and it is legal. Bullhead fillets or stone cat fillets. Fresh, not rotten. Live minnows are good too.
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Catalpa worms are about the best thing you can put on a hook.
Walt
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Walt they are really good down here we reserve them for big blue gill, and othe big pan fish. Ronnie
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Thanks for all the ideas guys. I don't have any catalpa worms and squid are pretty scarce here in Indiana Mullet ;D I tried the shrimp a few years ago and I don't remember doing to well with them. I'm going to try the velveeta cotton balls and some cut fish. I never thought of using frogs. I could catch some and freeze them for next week. Last night I started making a minnow trap. The creek next to my work is full of big chub minnows. I've never made a trap before. Does anyone know how big to make the holes on the inverted cones?
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For soft baits like soap and the stink bait I cut small peices of panti hose put the bait in it tie it closed and stick it on the hook. the fish can't suck it off the hook and if they try to suck the bait out of the hose there hooked :)
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Never made one,bought a couple from wally world,the hole is about 3/4 inch across if I remember right. :) I don't think it is that critical,they ant smart enough to find their way out anyway. :)
Pappy
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A glass jug will work too Clint.
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I spent a lifetime chasing those things around up here. They are my fav-o-right fish to catch. I have my best luck using bite size chunks of whole frozen shrimp.
Cats are my favorite, too!! I'm usually a nightcrawler guy, but one of the biggest channel cats I ever caught was on a shrimp. I had a bag of them left over from a day of dock fishing on the Gulf. I kept them in the freezer for a couple years then decided to try them on channel cats.
I caught that one in the middle of the day under a bridge up on Lake of the Ozarks. It was probably twenty-five pounds...fought like a freight train.
My biggest flathead was on a nightcrawler. That was on a creek off the Missouri River. It probably weighed thirty-five or forty. I almost always use nightcrawlers. I keep a worm farm full of them in a little refrigerator in my work shop. I've had good luck with big grasshoppers on my pond, too. I've had channel cats hit them on the surface before!
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I've cought big catfish on bass baits, chicken guts just anything gross seems to work.
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Clint; look for squid in the Frozen food section, think Calamari. :)
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Thanks Mullet, I'll check it out. I caught my biggest catfish ever last year on freezer burnt deer scraps. I'm going to try them at the lake too. I'm excited about trying some different ideas and see what works best. I'll let everyone know how I do.
I finished the minnow trap. I'm going to try it out tomorrow evening and see if it works. I've never used one before. I had to google it to see what they looked like. It is 36" long and 9" wide. The openings in the cones are about the size of a golfball.
(http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r55/clintanders/SDC14827.jpg)
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Perfect
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yep that should work.Ron
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This Is Guaranteed To Work...Period!
Get about a pound of cheap ground beef & 1/2 lb of limburger cheese.
Wearing surgical gloves, mix it really good with a bag of cotton balls to keep it together.
Take a pair of old panty hose, stick one leg inside the other, add a few handfulls of gravel and about 1/2 of the mixture.
Tie a rope around it and toss it into the area you are going to fish at about 3 to 4 hours (overnight is better) before you do
start fishing with the other 1/2 of the mixture. This stuff stinks something god-awfull so make sure you wear those gloves.
When you bait the hook try to cast around the area where the chum bag was dropped earlier...and I promise it will work!
An old South Carolina Black Man showed me this trick when I was about 8 years old and it works everytime for me.
Good Luck.
Gunny
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Perfect minner trap! looks alot like mine! ;)
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I don't know about the lake that you will be fishing.... but lakes lend themselves to chumming an area. What we do is sink a square bale of hay with six cans of dogfood wired to it. Punch a bunch of holes in the dogfood cans. Tie a floating marker to mark your hay bale.... Something around woody cover in 12 feet or more of water.... Then your bait won't matter much. I favor minnows, seined locally, or shad for the channels and blues - live bluegills or big shiners for the flatheads. Let me know when the fish fry kicks off.
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I think my minnow trap has mesh about half the size of that one. Of course, if all you want to catch is the larger minnows the larger mesh lets the little ones swim out so you don't have to mess with them. Good luck.
George
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The lake is mostly used for recreation. It is full of ski boats on the weekends. I'm not sure if we will be able to chum any where.
George, the chub minnows are so big in the creek that I was catching them on a small hook the other day. The mesh is 1/2" squares.
Man I'm getting excited to try some of these ideas out. Thanks guys
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Clint you may even catch some snakes in that trap. That would be an added bonus :laugh:
Cipriano
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i've been wanting to make on for crawdads in my creek. Nice trap. dp
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Clint,if you are catching chubs on a hook you are on the right path.chubs are great for flatheads.they tend to like live fish baits.channels and blues like stinky baits.my biggest flatheads where caught on slabs of carp that i shot on that same body of water.carp that i shot else where didn't work as good as the ones i had shot there.i guess they smell different.i have caught 4 over 50 pounds.channels and blues love the cherry chicken.the last time i used cherry chicken at the gun club,i caught 17 and the smallest blue was 8 pounds.it works brother.hope you catch a bunch buddy.
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now I'm all messed up! I thought I was going to focus on my bowfishing, but now all I can think about are these whisker fish!!
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Cant beat Catalpa worms when they are out. If you use the chicken livers cut squares of panty hose to wrap around them then secure on the hook.....they will stay on a long time and not fly off.
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The minnow trap works great. I threw two dinner rolls in it and left it in the creek for 2 hours. When I pulled it out, there were 25 perfect sized bait fish in it.
I cleaned out my tackle box today and got some new line, hooks, and weights on my way in to work tonight. I went with the braided spider wire. On the back of the box it says its made from Dyneema. That sounds familiar. I got 50 lb test for my small poles and 65 for my big one. That should do it.
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The minnow trap works great. I threw two dinner rolls in it and left it in the creek for 2 hours. When I pulled it out, there were 25 perfect sized bait fish in it.
I cleaned out my tackle box today and got some new line, hooks, and weights on my way in to work tonight. I went with the braided spider wire. On the back of the box it says its made from Dyneema. That sounds familiar. I got 50 lb test for my small poles and 65 for my big one. That should do it.
8) when do you leave? taunt lines, dp
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Monday. I can't wait
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sounds like the catfish are in trouble. My grandad and I used to fish lakes at night from a row boat with chicken livers and did well. Since then I have done better on fresh fish live or cut bait. With minnows I sometimes cruch the heads and break the belly open before hooking them.
Good luck
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The fishing trip might be postponed. I'm in the ER hooked up to an antibiotic IV. This morning I noticed a bug bite on my upper inner thigh. It got bad quick today. They are doing a blood test to see if it is MRSA.
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Once caught a 5 lb channel cat that had a nearly full-grown barn swallow in his belly. I caught him on a #1 Mepps spinner just under the bridge where the swallows were nesting.
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Dang it Osage!
Sorry to hear that!
Prayers out for your Speedy Recovery!
-gus
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Osage - hopefully it aint - had it once dont want it again!
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Man Clint, I hope your okay! Almost sounds like a recluse bite reaction :P
If you get back to catfishing, live bait for flats and blues and all the above for channels. I will add seining crawfish (normal and soft) along with helgrimites.
Take care and get better!
Tracy
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Dang Clint!!! You OK? Thinkin about you Buddy. dpg
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Thanks for all the get well wishes. Thankfully it wasn't anything serious. Sunday morning it started as a bug bite. By Sunday night it was a red welt 4" across with a big blister center. The Dr. said it was some kind of bacterial infection probably from a bug bite. This is the second time I have had this happen to me while at work. I guess there is some kind of bug there that has the bacteria on it.
As far as the catfishing, it was lousy. Nothing was biting. I caught 4 small ones over 4 days :( I tried all sorts of different bait and the only thing I could get any bites on were hotdog chunks soaked in cherry koolaid. I was using my little 30" mini pole and some corn kernels to catch some bluegills off the dock. A 3-4 lb catfish ate the corn and took off. I had to grab the line with my hand and try to land it. I got it to the surface of the water and then it straightened the small hook. That was the best action I had all week. I did enjoy sitting on the dock and working on some hunting arrows. Thanks for all the bait ideas.
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Glad your well and got to go fishing even if it wasn't the best fishing. Welcome home, dpg
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Clint,
I'm so glad it wasn't MRSA and I'm glad you are well again. Sorry to hear the fishing was ducky... Duck duck...
Cipriano
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Those are all great bait, especially the shrimp and squid. I used all of them when I was a kid. Found out down here the stinkier the bait the better. Used to use liver in a piece of nylon stocking, or even Ivory soap works. Some catfish, you can catch with just the bait and no hook, just reel them in slowly and net, them . ;)
Like catching blue claw crabs. Used to use traps, but found using a net, and reeling them in slowly,I could fill up a five gallon bucket in an hour. ;)
Wayne
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I had a friend whos' dad was always catching turtles and always used and said turtle live ,hearts were the best for chanle cats. When we were in our teens I had 2 cousins that caught and sold turtle meat to restrants for a few years. I had then start collecting the hearts,livers since they fished with use anyways. We always had quart jars full in the frezzer.
The old guy was'nt lieing we've caught 100's and 100's of cats off the hearts and livers. In those years. We once went to a cat fish turment in some big pounds. It was hot mid JUNEA day the 3 of use caught 41 CATS 3 over 10 pounds. 1 GUY CAUGHT A ELL. THEY BY LENTH. NO ONE ELSE CAUGHT A FISH. I think he knew the owner I've never heard of that and hav'nt since.
We were perty pissed. I sold our all most finished quart and a full one we had in the cooler to the guy next to us for $35.00. We spent the evening in the air condishing of a bar down the road.
Do'nt know how the guy did that bought us out did but he was happy when we left.
IT STAYS ON REALLY WELL. We also use fresh and rotted beef liver alot both works well and stays on really good also. As well as rotten deer stake. It's not bad either.
But I say turtle hearts nad livers are by far the best cat fish bait I've ever used.
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Glad your well and got to go fishing even if it wasn't the best fishing. Welcome home, dpg
The worst day fishing is better than the best day working. Glad to hear you're better, Clint.