What is your favorite catfish bait?

I've used plain ol' beef liver, pieces of cut up wieners. I've heard chunked up Ivory Soap (!) even works, but haven't tried it. The only species that is here is the Channel Catfish, at least that I'm aware of.

What species of catfish are you looking to catch? Channel cats will sometimes take artificials, I've had good luck with Panther Martin spinners, fished really slow. As well as a small lead head jig which is hopped along the mud buttom. Channels are a bit more visual than other catfish.

Good luck - spring time and fish frys . . . a combination made in heaven.

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Ripe chicken guts. When we butcher chickens we always save the guts 1 set in a baggie and freeze them. We let them thaw and "ripen" for a few days before use, but work ok just thawed. They are tough and last well, you can get a pretty good wad on a hook, and the local catfish of all species seem to love them.

I'm in Florida so we don't have the great big catfish. I think only channel cats. Well besides saltwater sail cats and regular slimey saltwater cats.

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When I was a kid, my grandpa used to drop me off on the shore with a fishing pole and have me catch a bucket of sunfish in the 3-4" range. He would then use a humongous hook -- it was as big as the palm of my hand when I was eight or nine years old!

He'd set the live sunfish about 2' off the bottom of the lake (this would be Bartlett in AZ mostly) in about 40-50 feet of water, with a lead weight the size of my fist (he made them himselves) in the entrance to a cove. He'd use a bleach bottle for a bobber and deep sea tackle.

Almost every time, he'd catch two or three REALLY big channel cats, in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 pounds every night. They run in schools, BTW, and tend to go from deeper water in the day into shallow water at night, which was the point of leaving a sunfish for them in the deep water at the entrance to a cove.

I've also landed a 15 pound channel cat on lizard once, fishing for bass during the spawn. (Boy was I surprised when I got that cat up onto shore; I thought I'd hooked the mother of all largemouths!)

Problem with catfish around here is that they taste like the water they're living in. If you've ever sample the water here in the Phoenix area, you Know What I mean ... grandpa always ate them, which meant we always got our share, but, uh, blech.

Cats will also take a waterdog, too, now that I think about it. Live bait always seems to work better than stinkbait for the really big ones.

Leva