Three Sure-Fire Home Catfish Baits

Catfish find their food primarily by smell and taste. Blues and Channel catfish will eat both live and dead flesh. Flathead prefer their food to be squirming. Of course individual fish will have individual tastes. And what works today won't tomorrow, or next season, at least.

Talk to any experienced angler and you'll get a dozen recipes or tips for sure-fire bait: Sliced up hot dogs dipped in sardine juice, clams from the can, even smaller catfish have all been touted as the best thing since sliced bread. Oh, and sliced bread's on the list of best bait, as well.

Chicken Livers

Read the forums, talk to the guys in the bait shop, and pretty soon you'll learn that no bait is more closely associated with catfishing than the chicken liver. Chicken livers work. With their strong, meaty smell, chicken livers draw cats from broad areas. Once the cats find the bait, they have trouble resisting them.

Livers are inexpensive and available from any grocery store, but they can be difficult to keep on the hook. Many a fisherman has cast his bait way farther than the hook. The best solution is to keep the livers frozen until you plan to use them and then only let them thaw out partially before using them. You can also use treble hooks and relatively small pieces of bait. Wrap the liver onto the hook and pierce it in several places. That should keep it on there.

Livers lose a lot of their natural juices over time, and become less attractive to the fish. Re-bait your hooks periodically and always begin with a fresh piece of liver after moving to a new spot. Strong currents can tear the livers off the hooks.

For ponds or other small-water settings, add a split shot or two to the line to keep the bait on the bottom. In lakes or rivers, more weight will usually be needed.

Dip Baits
Dip baits are legendary. Recipes have been handed down through the ages and are guarded as solemn secrets around the campfire. The most prestigious dips are home made, though store bought varieties abound. Whether home brewed or manufactured, dip baits are gooey and usually smell horrible, but catfish absolutely cannot resist them.

While all dip baits smell bad, a foul odor is not enough to attract the cats. The dip must have some kind of protein content: Cheese or fish, chicken or insect. The bait's consistency is critical. A good dip is soft enough that it breaks up gradually, but solid enough that it does not wash away quickly.