Best catfish bait

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xEchOx said:
Live/Cut baits are obviously going to produce larger fish. If you are fishing with a live sucker or sunfish, only larger cats can take them down, its pretty simple logic. That isn't to say that large catfish won't ever take liver or night crawlers it's just that the smaller cats that have to rely on their speed will get there first.

On another note, sunfish and shad are not available to everyone. In Minnesota and North Dakota you cannot use any Gamefish as bait - cut, dead, found on the side of the road or otherwise so we need to explore other options... like chicken livers or shrimp - or our cut/live bait would most likely be a large sucker minnow.

:D No need to get hurt feelings over the subject. We all love fishing. :D .... and some of us apparently like holding hands too. ;)
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Excatly when it comes to catfishing, you have pretty limited bait selection in Minnesota. We cannot use sunfish or carp for catfish bait. Also good dead baits (ciscoes and smelts have to be VHS-free ones) are hard to find. Shads and mooneyes are not excatly common in some areas. Bad thing about suckers is that almost everything loves them.
 
jworth said:
hot dogs?!? stop that... If you are fishing wild waters, don't waste your time. If you are fishing a little crappy retention pond, then go ahead. Chicken livers in panty hose will catch you little channel cats. If you are after the big boys, blues and flatheads, use live bluegills or something similar or cut bait. Leave the garbage bait to all the people who don't fish for quality catfish.
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No joke. I have fished the Sacramento River delta with hot dogs plenty of times. That is no crappy retention pond. It's a huge river system. We have caught plenty of big blues and channels over 5 pounds. My younger brother even pulled a big 10-12 pound range blue with a piece of good ol oscar mayer.
 
Also, years after using hot dogs, I was watching an episode of Bill Dance. He was fishing for big blues using a jar of hot dogs made for fishing cats. It looked like a power bait jar(the ones for trout). He was catching big blues just fine.
 
bill dance is probably the worst example for fishing in any way shape or form... he fishes all private heavily stocked waters in his shows. as already has been stated yes sometimes good 10lb+ class cats will hit a liver or hotdog etc but to consistently catch fish in that range would be tough to do
 
NCStateFisher said:
bill dance is probably the worst example for fishing in any way shape or form... he fishes all private heavily stocked waters in his shows. as already has been stated yes sometimes good 10lb+ class cats will hit a liver or hotdog etc but to consistently catch fish in that range would be tough to do
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Bill Dance does suck, and I'm sure he was paid to promote whatever hot dog stuff he was using too. I've consistently caught 5+ lb cats all night long with hot dogs before plenty of times. I'm just sharing my experiences and not arguing with anyone here. In California, the use of gamefish as bait is illegal, so I had to explore other options. I would have been more than happy to have used live sunfish as bait if it were legal. They're free and nothing beats natural food for huge cats. Everyone has got their preferences, and I loved using hot dogs when I was still living in California.
 
fish_sauce said:
Bill Dance does suck, and I'm sure he was paid to promote whatever hot dog stuff he was using too. I've consistently caught 5+ lb cats all night long with hot dogs before plenty of times. I'm just sharing my experiences and not arguing with anyone here. In California, the use of gamefish as bait is illegal, so I had to explore other options. I would have been more than happy to have used live sunfish as bait if it were legal. They're free and nothing beats natural food for huge cats. Everyone has got their preferences, and I loved using hot dogs when I was still living in California.
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then use non gamefish, chubs, suckers, carp (i see people on the catfish forum use these all the time in Cali), bullheads or use cut shad etc...
 
i wasn't arguing with you at all that livers or hot dogs don't catch fish, this thread just kind of evolved in to being about larger cats lol
 
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