Favorite Baits.........

The catalpa worm is really about as good as it gets IF you can get them. They are tough as nails and stay on the hook better than any other bait I've ever used. Plus the juices from them really draw in the cats.

Also used hellgramites, crawfish, cut bait made from other fish and the huge night crawlers we used to get by sawing for them. To do that you found a low lying moist area covered in leaves with small trees growing there. Cut off a tree about 1.5"-3" in diameter about 2'-3' from ground. Now take a handsaw and saw downward into it slowly. You're not trying to cut so much as to vibrate the ground. They come up in droves and can be over a foot long. For trotlines those are what we have mostly used. Some whole small fish like bream or shiners.

For rod and reel fishing mostly either catalpa worms or earth worms. Never did like liver as it don't stay on well and I just don't like liver. Yuck! Most stink baits are too delicate for running water I've fished.

GB

Used chicken livers for years. Went to an outdoor show where I met this bigtime TV fishing show guy that chose to make fun of me and my choice of bait in front of everyone there. Told him the reason he didn't see chickens swimming on the Ohio river was because the big cats ate um all.

2 days later we saw this same guy on the river with camera crew in tow. Must have had half a million dollars worth of fishing equipment, but no fish. Just to show there were no hard feelings, we pulled along side and showed him what 11 fish from 9 to 43# actually looked like. Only thing that would have made it better would have been if his whiz bang motor wouldn't have started, but it did. He seemed to be in a hurry to go some where.

I don't like the taste of liver either but channel cats sure do. Use chub minnows from a local branch, 8 or 10" long, for flatheads.

I just remembered this one after reading a magazine the other day. Years ago there was this older black man who always sat in the same lawn chair on the same spot on the bank of Tennessee river. This gentleman always had a good "mess" of fish. My family fished there often during the summer. I think I was 10 or 11. We always used liver or night crawlers and had fair success but nothing like this gentleman. I remember my mother asking him what he used for bait and he said "mussels" The Tennessee river is commonly used for the commercial harvest of freshwater mussels. Later in life I found out from a friend who lives in the area that we were about ten or fifteen miles from a mussel processing plant. Mussels are harvested for freshwater pearls and their shells. This gentleman was getting the meats from the mussel divers to use as catfish bait. The meats are very tough and rubbery, just the right size for a hook and have a strong odor. The perfect bait. James, a buddy of mine who lives in the area still fishes the River and has reported finding open mussel shells in the stomachs of catfish. Seems the fish seeks out these mussels, they eat them, then the acids in their stomachs kill the mussel causing them to open where they are digested with the empty shell being expelled. I've seen it work before, I need to get my hands on some shell fish to try this out.... Good Luck............



Frog

For channels and blues shad can't be beat, and the fresher the better. Sometimes whole shad, sometimes shad heads, shad fillet, fillet with gut, whatever. With shad there's always some way to make em bite.

For flatheads give me a live perch.

My second choice would be night crawlers.

I've got a bad feelin towards catalpa worms. I used to use em some. There was a house in town that had two trees in the front yard and one in back. The old woman that lived there always let me gather all I wanted each summer. They seemed to work way better fresh than they did after being frozen.

That old woman got in bad health and had to go to an assisted living home, so me bein the wise entrepreneur I was, decided that I'd just buy that place, have me some rental income and my own personal bait stash.

Boys I guess I owned that place for something like 12 years, and never got one damn worm off those trees.