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One of the best catfish baits available at you’re your local grocery store is chicken liver. The blood in a chicken liver gradually seeps into the water providing an excellent scent trail for the catfish to find. Channel catfish and young (small) Blue catfish both will eat this bait up.
As with most catfish baits, they should be fished on the bottom with a slip sinker. One of the drawbacks to using liver for catfish bait is that it is difficult to keep on the hook when casting. This can be frustrating when you think you have a good cast but you see the bait fly off.
There are three things that you can do to keep fresh livers on the hook. Keep in mind that I use # 6 treble hooks for all of these methods.
1. When placing the liver onto your hook try to work it so that you only puncture it once with each barb. The more you try to get it hooked the mushier you make it. You will still lose your bait at times this way.
2. Put your liver on the hook as above but now take about ten inches of thread and wrap around the bait and the hook. Make it firm but not hard enough to cut into the bait. This stays on pretty good.
3. Take some old panty-hose or potato netting (from a sack of potatoes) and cut a circle out of it the size you want to put your bait in. I make mine about three inches. Wrap it around the chicken liver and use a small rubber band to tie it up. You can cast a mile with this setup and it will not come off of the hook.
Chicken livers are one of the best catfish baits available and with these tips you will be able to spend more time fishing and less time casting. With catfish the best catfish baits are the ones the catfish want. This can change day to day or hour to hour so always take three or four baits with you.
Good luck on your next outing. Visit Catfish Bait Recipes to get more great homemade catfish baits.
I know it has been awhile since my last article and I may not be able to post as often as I did last year. I apologize for that but I really do have a good reason. I busted my right shoulder up pretty good before Thanksgiving. The doctor tried treating it with shots for several months and finally decided on surgery which I had March 17th.
It is now almost two months since the surgery and I am beginning to be able to do some things with my right hand but not much. I am not allowed to lift anything more than a glass of water until June. I am not asking for you to feel sorry for me. My shoulder has caused me pain for years and once I am through rehab that should be gone. I just want you to know why I have been silent for so long.
Fishing is a passion of mine and I enjoy helping others. This brings me to this point. I finally talked the doctor into letting me go fishing. He said ok as long as I stayed on shore and took it easy. I knew I couldn’t use my right hand (and I am right handed) to cast and that I would have to do it left handed. I thought that might be difficult with some of my rod combinations but I thought I would do a test of the three real types:
Bait casting
Spinning
Spin Casting
Now we all know which is harder to use and which is the easiest. I was trying to put myself in the context of a kid trying to learn how to cast each of them. So, off I went to a local pond I know that produces some goods catches.
I decided to try the bait casting combination first because I knew it would be the hardest. My first cast went about 10 feet and gave me a ton of line to untangle. My second wasn’t much better a little further and a little less line to untangle. My third try went way left of my target and again I had a ton of line to untangle.
Honestly, no surprise that the bait casting was the most difficult to use. To be honest I quit trying after the third try and an hour of untangling the fishing line. I definitely wasn’t having any fun at this point. Then I remembered that I was a teenager when my father taught me how to use one and I always had another line in the water to keep me from being frustrated until I got the hang of it. Too late now, I was done with the bait casting reel.
But I also remembered what motivated me as a young boy to learn how to use the bait casting reel. Distance, pure and simple. I wanted to be able to cast further than my father and I couldn’t do it with anything else.
I then tried the spinning reel and it was pretty easy to cast after a time or two but it seemed to have a mind of it’s own about where it wanted to go. The problem might have been because I have never casted left handed and the angle of the release was wrong. But in any case I moved on to the spinning reel. My arm was getting sore and I wanted to catch some fish before I had to go.
I had no problems casting the spin casting reel and proceeded to do my best to get something to bite. I managed one small catfish and a decent sized bass before I had to go home. I released both of them.
I guess the point I want to make is that on this day I had much more fun with the spin casting reel. I hope that when all of you take a kid fishing it is because you want them to have fun. It is great if they can learn the finer points of fishing but let them learn when they want to learn and let them enjoy it so they will continue the tradition and pass it on to someone else.
There’s quite a variety of good fishing going on out there now, but soon some of the best that will be occurring on the big lakes will be in the rocky shallows, as channel catfish move in for their spring spawning action. Spawning usually takes place in late May or early June when the water temperature reaches 75 degrees.
Hollow logs, overhanging underwater ledges or holes under mud banks are typical nesting places. Females lay about 10,000 eggs each. Males guard the nest against intruders, including females. Eggs hatch in 6 to 10 days determined by temperature. After hatching, the catfish fry are attended for a short time by the male as they feed in a dense school.
And it’s certainly not difficult to find a prime spot for this traditional early-summer catfish action on the big lakes. Every major lake has literally mile after mile of rocky riprap fill where a highway crosses the lake. Those are always hot spots for this fishing, and of course they can be accessed most effectively by a boat, as anglers move along the riprap, working them with a slip-cork rig and some type of good catfish bait. My favorite has always been cut bait.
But if you don’t have a boat, you can still pick a spot somewhere along the rocky banks and put out several rods/reels with corks to cover a good amount of water. Catfish can be caught anytime of day but they are most active at night. Be patient and you will catch your share of catfish.
