Catching catfish

Has anybody ever tried putting holes in a few cans of gravy style dog food in area of fishing for catfish the day before and had any luck? I was told this would work but when i tried i didn't get anything. Just wandering if i should try again?

Re: Catching catfish

I haven't "chummed" in years but when I did I always did while I was fishing.
Kernal corn was always chum of choice.

Re: Catching catfish

yes it works great, I do it all the time with dog food. The only problem I see with it, its littering!!!!!! so what I do, is I use a crawdad trap, poke a bunch of holes in the can, put in in the crawdad trap, tie a rope to it and through it out there, that way you can get the can back out of the water. I have also heard a lot of oldtimers talking about throwing roadkills out in the catfish holes, they say it works great, and cleans up the streets ha ha, but I dont think I would want to eat a fish, that has been eating roadkill

Re: Catching catfish

Freeze a couple of containers of chicken livers. Then when your ready to fish put the frozen livers in a nylon stocking, tie a string to em and hang them off the boat. Works great and last a good long time.

Re: Catching catfish

I would find a seafood based cat food, the more it smells the better, put it in some kind of net/onion bag so you can remove the cans when you are done. No need to litter. I have not tried it in years but in did work well.


Good Luck

Re: Catching catfish

Works great , just remember to retrieve the cans when you are done .

Many years ago you could get blood from any slaughter house .
This stuff is awesome if mixed with a dough bait and fish oil .
Use it for dough bait , or , as a chum .
A little anise oil allso helps the attractant qualities .

Chumming like this attracts a lot of "eating size' catfish , 1-15lbs .
For the really big blues and flatheads ,you want to feed them live baits , or , FRESH cut bait .

You can also make your own chum , entirely fish based .
A cast net and an old hand crank sausage grinder will keep you busy longer than you can stand it .
Shad are plentiful here , along with skipjack .
The skipjack are fun to catch with jigs , etc...
Shad can be caught by the hundreds with a few throws of the net .

Grind up your own chum , freeze it in 1 lb bags .
Take out a few bags when you are ready to chum .
Being frozen , it tends to float , so , weight it and whatever it is in(pantyhose , mesh/screen container , resealable container with lots of little holes ...

Check your local regs before trying this , it may be illegal in your state .

Re: Catching catfish

Thanks for the replies. I'm going this weekend and will give it another try. The one thing i didn't hear mentioned as a good catfish bait is fresh bloody chunks of deer meat. My uncle has a 2 acre farm pond and that's what we use to catch them. They love it and we usually catch 6-7 3-4lb cats within about 2 hours of fishing. Last year i was fishing on the bottom for catfish and felt a tug on my line so i set the hook and started reeling it in. Thinking i had a good size catfish or turtle on the line i kept reeling it into the bank and about 8ft out the fish took off to the right. I didn't let it put too much of a fight up because i was full of excitement on how big it was going to be. When i got him to the bank it was a 6.5lb large mouth bass. I about crapped on myself. I have never caught a bass that big. My uncle asked the stupid question"are you going to keep it"? I told him of course. I figured the fish had lived a long life in that pond plus not to mention he had swallowed a trebble hook. The fish is now frozen in my freezer with the hook still in. I'm trying to find a good price localaly to have him mounted.

Re: Catching catfish

Canned cat food works the best because the oil in the food

Re: Catching catfish

Chumming can involve many types of attractants. Non-floating wire fish baskets filled with range cubes, or blocks of ground fish work well. U can tie them off and set them to what ever depth u desire. Soured soybeans, and grain seem to work the best.

Fill a 5 gallon bucket about 2/3 full and then top with water and let sit in sun for a week or so. The smell is terrible but you can keep a spot hot all summer with repeated applications.

I have also used dog food in a fish basket. As it softens pieces float out and fill the water with goodies. Also small minnows can get inside and speed up the process, some even add a few small fish to agitate the chum and speed up the dispersion in the water.

Re: Catching catfish

mrmushroomman said:

When i got him to the bank it was a 6.5lb large mouth bass. I about crapped on myself. I have never caught a bass that big.

Click to expand...

Beautiful catch mrmushrooman. That would certainly be an exciting catch for bass.

Re: Catching catfish

You can also sing bags of rice, buy in bulk, and keep going back to the same area. The more you sink the better the fishing.

We also used to make a stink bait out of chicken livers and cheap shrimp. Just put it all in a jar and set out in the sun for a couple of days. One year we caught several nice sized trout , during the winter, on the shrimp. Dont use the chicken livers unless they are wrapped in a stocking or end of a panty hose.